The term 'felonization' refers to the strategic use of novel legal charges to label political opponents as felons, a tactic that the Democrats have employed against former President Trump, echoing methods used by authoritarian regimes. As we predicted yesterday, every liberal and TDS voice, from Robert DeNiro to MSNBC to The View, could not contain their glee in being able to call former President Trump a "convicted felon."
Politico's founding editor and Trump hater John Harris ran with this column: Guilt Complex: Trump's Felony Convictions Are a Big Political Problem. Even for a politician who skates away from scandal, this week complicates Trump's path to election.
The New York Times ran several stories, including two that stood out. The lead said: Democrats Push Biden to Make Trump's Felonies a Top 2024 Issue. And this nasty piece: Donald Trump has few ways to overturn his conviction as a New York felon.
Felon. Felon. Felon. Never Trumpers had waited for this day for years, and Trump in an orange jumpsuit was finally going to happen. It didn't matter that his mug shot had been taken in a different state (Georgia) for a different "crime" (racketeering). It didn't matter that the entire case was filled with inconsistencies and rulings that showed extreme bias, including being blatantly unconstitutional when it came to the defendant's rights. America, the liberals crowed, again set an example in the family of nations as a country that treats everyone equally in the eyes of the law, not even sparing a former president.
But a closer examination of the Democrats' wrecking-ball strategy reveals that the well-planned campaign has destroyed America's brand as a free and fair nation. Ronald Reagan's depiction of America as a shining city on a hill when he sought to draw stark differences with the Soviet Union seemed to be a distant dream.
America has now descended into the ranks of authoritarian regimes like Russia, China, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, where vast state bureaucracies are used to cripple political opponents, arrest them, and even kill them in prison. Indeed, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), the Ranking Member of the Committee on Homeland Security, introduced the Denying Infinite Security and Government Resources Allocated toward Convicted and Extremely Dishonorable Former Protectees Act, with an acronym that spells DISGRACED, to take away Secret Service protection from Donald Trump and open him up to physical harm, including the possibility that he could be killed.
While other countries use their brutal state police regimes to humiliate political opponents, America does it all under the banner of protecting democratic institutions as a rule-of-law country where everyone is equal.
The Democratic lawfare campaign against Trump started in November 2022, when President Biden, glowing under the lights of White House press cameras as he celebrated the Democrats' better-than-expected mid-term election season, let the secret slip in his biggest gaffe to date.
Phil Mattingly of CNN, respectful of Biden's wishes not to utter former President Trump's name but ask a question about him nevertheless, asked at 00:20:16 in this C-SPAN video clip:
CNN: "The entire genesis of that G7 conversation was tied to your predecessor, who is about to launch another campaign. How do you reassure them that if that is the reason for the questioning that the former president will not return, that his political movement, which is still very strong, will take power in the United States?"
Biden: "We just have to demonstrate that he will not take power if he does run, making sure he — under legitimate efforts of our Constitution — does not become the next president again."
President Biden, in front of the world, clearly signaled to every Left-leaning federal, state, county, and city official in the country that if charges were brought against Trump, he would not only encourage them but would provide adequate support through the vast Never Trumper network to cripple Trump. It was a masked executive order no different from Russian President Vladimir Putin ordering his FSB cronies to bring harm to Alexei Navalny, Russia's most decisive opposition leader in years. Navalny died in prison in February 2024.
Exactly nine days later, on November 18, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the appointment of Jack Smith as Special Counsel to investigate Trump's role in J6 and his handling of the classified documents. Fulton County prosecutors brought racketeering charges against Trump, but before they did, they met with the Biden White House twice, in May and November 2022. The latter meeting happened on November 18, the same day that Garland announced Smith as his Special Counsel.
The E. Jean Carroll v. Donald J. Trump New York City case was civil in nature, but that was also carefully planned to constrain Trump at every turn. The State of New York changed the statute of limitations for just one year so that Carroll could bring a sexual assault case against Trump. Although Carroll could not even remember the year in which the supposed assault happened, a jury found Trump guilty and awarded $5 million in damages. When Trump denied ever knowing her and claimed that Carroll was lying to sell a memoir and perhaps to hurt him politically, she sued for defamation. Another jury found Trump guilty of defaming her and approved an $83.3 million award.
The prosecutor or the judge would not budge to reduce the ridiculously high award for defamation. As grounds for an appeal, the judge ruled that Trump had to put up an astonishing $92 million bond to cover interest and penalties. The ruling clearly violated the United States Constitution's Eighth Amendment, which says that "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."
Three states - Colorado, Maine, and Illinois - ruled through their courts or executives that Trump could not be on their state ballots for the primary or general elections. The Supreme Court intervened and ruled 9-0 to put an end to that nonsense.
As Smith's federal charges began to slow down in higher courts, and as the Fulton County prosecutors got caught up in their self-inflicted ethical scandals, the Biden team's last ray of hope was the Manhattan case.
During Trump's 2016 campaign against Hillary Clinton, fearing that a porn star with whom he had a brief encounter in a Las Vegas hotel could blackmail him, candidate Trump agreed to pay $130,000 to secure her silence through a non-disclosure agreement.
NDAs are common in the business world, and Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg knew there was nothing there. When he investigated the accounting of the payment, Bragg thought of bringing charges that Trump falsified records. However, these would be civil misdemeanors, and since they happened in 2016, the two-year statute of limitations had already passed.
How could Bragg breathe life into this civil misdemeanor and elevate it to a criminal felony? As the New York Times explained it, Mr. Bragg argued that Trump had falsified the records to cover up violations of a little-known state law against conspiring to win an election by "unlawful means." But Trump hadn't run for any New York State office, so Bragg dug up a novel theory that Trump unlawfully won the 2016 general election by falsifying records, after Trump had successfully fulfilled his entire term in office.
Bragg had professional help from the Biden administration. Matthew Colangelo, the Assistant Attorney General in the Biden administration and the third in command at the Department of Justice quit his job and joined Bragg's DA team prosecuting Trump.
"It's very odd. It's usually the other way around. . . . And frankly, that sounds to me like somebody who thought, 'Ah, here's an opportunity to go and get Donald Trump,'" attorney and former member of the Federal Election Commission, Hans von Spakovsky, told Fox News Digital in a phone interview this month.
No court in the world, not even a Kangaroo court, would have brought 8-year-old charges against the former leader of the Free World four years after he left office, far less convict him of all 34 counts of clerical violations such as invoicing, checks, and ledger entries when no one was harmed. Because these are state crimes, a president cannot pardon them. Only New York's governor could pardon them, and she has consistently towed the Never Trumper line that the guilty must be punished.
America's 45th president is now a convicted felon. In today's evil America, anything is possible, just as it is in those rogue authoritarian countries.
By felonizing his political opponent, President Biden has transformed the shining city on the hill into Bananamerica. It is worse than losing in Afghanistan and the invasion at the southern border. Let's chalk that up as Joe Biden's biggest achievement. Make no mistake: each time Democrats and the media label Trump a felon, they foolishly drive a stake into the hearts of silent Americans who know the truth, and the likelihood of Trump's victory grows. So let them say it ad nauseam. The day of comeuppance is 156 days away, as lying dog-faced pony soldiers and deplorables wait to render their judgment and free the America we love from the shackles of felonization.
