" In a democratic society, one who assumes to act for the citizens in an executive, legislative, or judicial capacity must expect that his official acts will be commented upon and criticized. Such criticism cannot, in my opinion, be muzzled or deterred by the courts at the instance of public officials under the label of libel."
-New York Times v Sullivan, (Goldberg concurrence)
-https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/376/254/
Ignoring the question of what former ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was a witness to, the democrats are screaming trump intimidated the witness by tweeting a disparaging opinion about her while she was being grilled by the Schiff star chamber-and there are calls for democrats to file a new article of impeachment. To many of us, intimidation is more about a negative emotional response to some kind of stimuli. In the legal sense building upon that incorrect idea, the origin would be a knowing and willing human origin of the stimuli. Somehow the ones screaming first and foremost of witness intimidation are somehow content with Schiff showing her the tweet out of context during the interrogation. Somehow it is shameful if Trump did it on his own twitter wall where visiting it is a choice, but acceptable if Schiff during the hearing itself presenting it right to the so called victim. Even most stalking (cough intimidation) based statute requires the act of getting into contact with a person; posting to your own social media page does not establish contact. So who established contact with the so called victim? Schiff.
But of course, Schiff gets her crying and blame it on Trump; get the women voters to express their empathy and ignore the facts because democrats passively view women as being nurturing, emotional, and incapable of reason. Women, aside from the politically delusional, are bright enough to see through this chicanery by the left. None the less the term intimidation many pundits are now using to spin news stories and new articles of impeachment based upon witness intimidation are completely without merit
Of course, there was no actual intimidation. Do you see it, I sure don't. When it comes to free speech, the left has been playing word games upon we the American citizens for some 25 years starting with Joe Biden. Read your own state's statutes on stalking or harassment. They will vary, but you might see words like emotional distress, embarrassment, fear for [my] safety, alarm, annoy, harass, intimidate. Many of these terms by themselves are not unlawful but it is worded in a way to charge many innocent people and scare them into pleading guilty for daring to express an idea. The schools aren't provided a formal education for people to know what their real first amendment rights are, but the feminist are receiving federal grants to teach kids ideas of what isn't acceptable to them; their understanding of what to do and what not to do is being determined by various [Marxist] social groups where one set of rules applies for everyone else but not them-and they have unconstitutional double speak statutes to back them up. It only takes one generation the ex-KGB member Yuri warned america to change our culture. It has been 25 years of this indoctrination of what is and isn't acceptable speech-and behold we have the snowflake generation. Biden and the feminists has confused enough Americans, that they are now striving to achieve a political coup...or at least trying to continue one through the political machinery when they have no case. If it were ordinary people spinning this theory then one couldn't blame certain pundits for being uninformed about what the first amendment is-we are being trained to be retarded while going tens of thousands into debt to get a certificate to declare that we are smart. A DNA test is cheaper and more accurate. Many of the people spinning this intimidating a witness theory are politicians and journalist-many with a law degree. In another words they should know better, they have a professional duty to know better. But they are banking on the American people being as stupid as Biden wanted us to become. To be quite blunt they are knowingly and willingly fraudsters and usurpers. And if I intimidated them by publishing this sentiment to my own steemit wall-well see the video at the end.
In regards to intimidation, and we'll see obviously there was none, the below is what the scotus has defined as intimidation in virginia v black.
[T]he First Amendment permits a State to ban "true threats," e. g., Watts v. United States, 394 U. S. 705, 708 (per curiam), which encompass those statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals, see, e. g., ibid. The speaker need not actually intend to carry out the threat. Rather, a prohibition on true threats protects individuals from the fear of violence and the disruption that fear engenders, as well as from the possibility that the threatened violence will occur. R. A. V., supra, at 388. Intimidation in the constitutionally proscribable sense of the word is a type of true threat, where a speaker directs a threat to a person or group of persons with the intent of placing the victim in fear of bodily harm or death.
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/538/343/#tab-opinion-1961221
In returning into libel law for a bit, it is ridiculous to claim that we cannot comment on public figures if such criticism hurts their feelings-the courts already rejected this standard for Libel as defined as false statements unless there was actual Malice (knowingly false). There is no federal criminal code against Libel. The allegation of intimidation for Trump's opinion of this woman is basically the democrats attempt to undermine truth as a defense in libel claims or other claims invoking harassment and stalking statutes. If it is a question of truthfulness of Trumps assessment of this woman, it is a matter for a civil jury trial and it must meet the burden that it was knowingly false since she is a public figure-A rather high burden to meet. The democrats haven't screamed libel; they are fixated on intimidating a witness. Still It really sets us back over 200 years for most of the US by trying to carve an intimidation exception to the defense of truth in libel, more like 300 years considering Truth as a defense started with John Peter Zenger in the early 18th century before the USA was its own country. It also undermines cases like Snyder v Phelps and NAACP v Claiborne hardware, where the SCOTUS acknowledged that speech can cause ostracism, stir people into action, cause embarrassment, pain, and drive people to tears and not erase the fact it is protected speech. But none of that matters to the democrats as they go after Trump, and if the President isn't safe from their tyranny then neither are we. The democrats are still angry about the 2016 elections, made it clear that they are still openly hostile to our freedom of speech. They seek to deprive us all of our logos, they want to be our unquestioned and unaccountable rulers. And should we dare question their wisdom, you see what they are doing to Trump. They've already destroyed our due process rights under VAWA in courts that have no jurisdiction. And when they fully take power, they'll just transmute the ex parte orders to outright kill, disappear, or re-educate anyone who disagrees with them....and they are presently disappearing us and we are witnessing a political coup against our democratic institutions. Most are banking that it will backfire on the democrats in the next election, but who is seriously defending the president from the usurpers. No one. Conservatives are making the same mistake as Germany did in the first world war. We are fighting a defensive war. Gambling on things backfiring on the Dems will likely work given the election is a year away, but it is also a good way to lose the country for good.
I wish we could just now all sit back and move on, But before the week is over we will hear 57 [57; a John kerry reference 🍅 ] other baseless theories on how the left intends to impeach Trump. Personally I don't mind the legislature being shut down; just means the democrats can't screw up this country more and Trump can't steer us further into debt spending. Just getting sick of this 3-almost 4-year effort to reverse the 2016 election. I am sure most of America is. I wish American would punish the democrats, but there are plenty of partisans hacks who will keep electing these idiots into office-even the dead will rise that one day every two years to keep them in office, and all of Mexico too. Maybe there is some dia de la muerte magic going on-I say that in jest of course. Maybe there is magical significance to commencing impeachment proceedings on Halloween-again spoken in jest.
Hopefully after the democrats attempt this on the President, Americans will start to become more supportive of free speech. But if people don't have the time to become first amendment experts as we are too busying paying for everyone else's problems, then they can learn it instantly from Milo.
Admit it, if Donald trump were to tweet this video in response to the democrats claim of intimidating a witness, he would win the internet for the year.
