Posted on by Californiacontrarian

I Am Not a Lawyer

Full disclosure to start off with. I am not a lawyer, and I do not pretend to understand all of the laws that are on the books. I assume that the laws are formulated to apply to everyone. If an individual does something, and there is a bad outcome, then that individual is potentially libel for the consequences of his/her actions.
The one notable exception that I can think of applies to elected officials who are doing their job according to the law. Again, I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that if an elected official pushes a policy that he/she believes to be the right thing to do, and this policy turns out to be a bad policy, the elected official cannot be sued because of damages that occurred because of that policy. The elected official was merely doing his/her job, and did not break any laws. Therefore that elected individual is not legally responsible for the bad things that occurred because of his/her poor judgement. (Again, I am not a lawyer, but in other words it is not a crime to be stupid!) The person and the example that comes to my mind is Barney Frank, the liberal ex-congressman from Massachusetts, who felt in the 2000s that, in essence, everyone should be able to buy a house. It was this type of poor judgement that eventually led to the market crash because a huge number of these loans were not being paid off. Because Barney Frank was an elected representative, and did not break any laws, he could not be sued by an individual because that individual lost his life savings as a consequence of Mr. Frank’s poor judgement. Again, I am not a lawyer, but I think that the key phrases here are “elected representative” and “did not break any laws.”

To shift gears, again I am no lawyer, but someone is deemed to be an accomplice if he/she knowingly helps another in the commission of a crime or wrongdoing. The driver of the getaway car can be prosecuted as an accomplice to the bank robbery, even though he/she was never in the bank. If I call the bank-robber on his cellphone to warn him that the police are on their way, and he is able to escape because of my warning, I am an accomplice and can be prosecuted as such, because that is the law.
I don’t think that one has to be a lawyer to know that if law A applies to ordinary Joe, then law A should apply to everyone else, no matter what that person’s title is . . . even if that person is the mayor of Oakland, Ca. The mayor (his/her name will not be mentioned!) admitted to warning many illegals that ICE was going to be making raids in Oakland area. Now granted, she did not drive the getaway car, nor did she speak to these illegals directly on the phone, but there is little question that she facilitated the escape of some criminals. If one of those who escaped ICE were to kill, maim, injure, or rape someone in the future, would the mayor of Oakland be libel?
Yes, she is an elected official, but did she break the law by warning criminals that the good-guys were coming? I am no lawyer, but my answer is, “Yes, she is an accomplice and thus broke the law, and yes, she should be held accountable for the consequences of her actions.”

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