That Term “Due Process”, I Do Not Think…

This article is excellent:

So what has happened to the four men who Merkin specifically holds up as unjustly convicted without due process, these innocent souls sacrificed to the Reckoning?

They’ve lost their jobs. Three of them were fired following formal investigations into their behavior; Franken, whose former office does not have a reasonably functioning investigatory arm, voluntarily left following eight separate accusations. While the Keillor, Schwartz, and Lizza investigations may not have been up to the standards of a criminal court, they also didn’t carry the same type of consequences as a criminal court, and as such they required a lower burden of proof.

None of these men have been convicted of any crimes. None of them have even been charged with any crimes.

But what about the other men affected, the ones Merkin labels as “the heinous sorts”? The ones who face multiple, detailed accusations of rape and sexual assault, with witnesses and corroborating evidence to spare?

A few of them have charges pending against them. Fewer of them have been arrested. None of them have been convicted.

And in the past, when these kinds of powerful men were accused of sexual violence and made it all the way to trial, almost none of them received jail sentences.

Given these facts, is it really the accused men of the Reckoning who have not had due process? Or is it their victims?

I don’t know how many people I’ve seen on Twitter and comments suggest that Al Franken was denied “due process.” Needless to say, they never identify any process he was due that he didn’t receive, because this didn’t happen. If he chose to, he could have retained his office while waiting for the (interminable) process to play out. The colleagues (and, yes, plural, despite the bizarre idea that Kirsten Gillibrand personally fired Franken or something) who called for him to resign had no coercive authority over him. They made political arguments which Franken accepted. The end. There’s no formal injustice here. And, as Grady says, employees are not being denied due process when they’re fired for cause after lengthy investigations.