A number of columns and editorials in recent weeks have openly wondered if the notion of a nation ruled by laws — fair laws reasonably interpreted by well-trained, unbiased, disinterested judges — was dying. Sorry, but it might already be dead.
The overtly political mugging of Donald Trump by a Soros-backed New York district attorney wielding a risible 34-count felony indictment that could put the ex-president behind bars for more than 100 years is bad enough.
But the absurd nature of the accusations make clear the legal charges have nothing to do with the law, and everything to do with Democratic politics.
It’s an obvious example of overreach by a prosecutor, New York’s leftist District Attorney Alvin Bragg, solely for political reasons. It’s an embarrassment to the once-great Empire State, and a travesty of law that will have a damaging effect on Americans’ faith in the legal system.
The left has mastered on technique, straight out of Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” — Rule #13: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
That’s precisely what is being done to ex-President Donald Trump.
With 2024 looking grim for the Democrats, their only hope is to make Trump into an arch-villain. This, they seem to think, will unite their party’s dispirited base voters, while depriving MAGA voters and others who see Trump as a bulwark against the left’s virulent socialism with an option on Election Day.
Why? Trump, right now, has a significantly large lead over the next biggest potential Republican rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. In our own I&I/TIPP Poll, taken in early March, Trump held a 51% to 27% lead over DeSantis among Republican-leaning voters for the 2024 GOP presidential primaries.
President Joe Biden, meanwhile, looks weaker and weaker by the day. The same poll shows just 43% of those who support the Democrats would vote for Biden. He doesn’t have a majority in his own party. Worse, his net approval rating is -12, near its record low.
So what else do you do? Run an Alinsky #13 on your most feared opponent, using a heavily biased local district attorney to do the hatchet job.
What’s tragic is such actions will undermine Americans’ faith in their legal system, even further damaging the rule of law. Future complaints about unfair or blatantly political treatment will be greeted by voters with a shrug. That’s how political corruption works.
We won’t go into the deep weeds of the legal case, because others with far more experience and expertise in the law have already done so here, here and here, for example.
“There may not be enough space in the mega-verse to describe the sundry flaws in the Manhattan district attorney’s indictment against the former president of the United States,” as legal writer Andrew C. McCarthy, a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, noted in the New York Post.
But we would underscore the following points:
- The indictment suffers from a number of what should be fatal legal flaws: First, the charges were filed after the expiration of the statue of limitations; second, as McCarthy writes, “It fails, despite its 34 counts, to state a crime”; third, Trump was charged with felonies that, even if proved, are usually misdemeanors paid for with a fine, not more than 100 years in prison;
- In going after Trump, the notoriously-soft-on-violent-crime prosecutor Bragg is overturning previous findings by his own office not to bring charges against Trump: “Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance, also concluded he didn’t have a case against Trump after a years-long investigation into the matter. Mark Pomerantz, a prosecutor under Vance, described the Daniels case as “too risky under New York law.’”
- Bragg’s actions have sowed more discord in this nation and quite possibly will act as an incitement to violence. Egged on by Democrats in Congress and in state parties around the nation, Bragg’s cynical “indictment” is clearly political in nature. Knowing this, even many Democrats are having second thoughts. No doubt they’re asking themselves: “What if we lose in 2024?”
This points out the obvious double standard in our justice system. Hillary Clinton paid to create a phony “dossier” on Trump to make him look as if he were a Russian stooge, a clear violation of the law.
As journalist Don Surber observes on Substack, “Hillary as secretary of State shared classified material through emails with donors to her fake charity. Many donors were foreigners. The bathroom server is an alibi. James Comey himself said she burned through servers — private and official alike.”
For sharing secrets with our enemies, she was fined a few thousand bucks.
And what about former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s profiteering on stocks? Or the Biden crime family’s raking in money from Joe’s various government gigs, with millions of dollars coming from the Communist Chinese government, Putin’s oligarchs, and even Ukraine?
There’s evidence aplenty of Democrats’ crimes. Funny, though, there’s not much action on their clear breaches by our supposed legal watchdogs, the Justice Department and FBI.
“No Justice, No Peace”? How about, “No Justice, No Country?”
“Democracy, which relies on both sides accepting each other’s legitimacy, is in real jeopardy of failing,” wrote Jonathan S. Tobin, editor in chief of the Jewish News Syndicate. “The real threat … can be found in a political culture that has been embraced by the left that is willing to stop at nothing to crush opponents.”
As such, this is much bigger than just former President Trump. The death of the rule of law in America means the death of our republic. Once government can indict you for your politics, censor you on social media, and give left-wing groups free rein while jailing conservatives, it will have shredded our Constitution and erased all your God-given rights. Don’t sit on the sidelines.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
