The cunning of the Democrats’ lawfare

It saddens me to admit it, but the evidence is too overwhelming to dismiss: Democrats are significantly more cunning than Republicans.

I say “Democrats,” but that is an imprecise, even a misleading, designation. Party affiliation is not now, if it ever was, a really accurate predictor of ideological coloration.

What I mean are those people, most of whom happen to belong to the Democratic Party, who have been bitten by the bug of extremism, who are fired by revolutionary fervor, who regard every opponent, every contrary opinion, as a “by-any-means-necessary” fire alarm.

It is an attitude that has stirred their creativity, also their vindictiveness.

Hercules had to undertake twelve supposedly impossible labors. Donald Trump is fast catching up.

It would never have occurred to me — or, I’d wager, to anyone on my side of the ideological aisle — to transform through the alchemy of political bile a normal business proceeding into a high-profile trial in which a verdict of fraud was handed down and an eye-watering fine of hundreds of millions of dollars imposed even though there was no one defrauded.

But that was exactly what happened to Donald Trump.

Similarly, who on the conservative side would have been clever or malicious enough to elevate a nondisclosure agreement into a thirty-four-count felony indictment? The alchemists of old would have been impressed by that power of transmogrifying the base matter of political spleen into electoral gold.

That, anyway, is what District Attorney Alvin Bragg and the compromised Judge Juan Merchan are hoping to accomplish with the so-called “hush-money” trial of the former president.

I say “so-called” hush-money trial because the predicate for the legal spectacle was not the payment of $130,000 to Stormy Daniels but the way the money was charted internally by the Trump Organization.

Both these trials underscore the creative genius — also the lack of scruple — that undergird the radical left’s assault on all things Trump.

It is not only Trump himself who is the focus of this obloquy. Anyone associated with him is fair game. Trump economic advisor Peter Navarro is currently languishing in jail for the tort of refusing to respond to a congressional subpoena. Eric Holder, Barack Obama’s attorney general, did the same thing. What happened to him? Nothing.

And there is John Eastman, who was disbarred and may be indicted for the crime of representing Donald Trump. In April he announced that at least two banks with which he had done business were terminating his accounts. His crime? Providing legal advice to Donald Trump in his effort to challenge the integrity of the 2020 election.

One mark of the radical left’s genius in this area is its able deployment of a two-tiered system of justice in such a way that its blatancy is somehow overshadowed, somehow excused, by the matter-of-fact way it is perpetrated.

From a purely operational — a Machiavellian — perspective, it is quite impressive if not exactly admirable. But now we are told that Bennie Thompson, ranking member of the Committee on Homeland Security, has introduced legislation to deny anyone Secret Service protection who has been incarcerated for at least one year after having been convicted of a felony.

Like so much that happens in the wacky, zany world of anti-Trump fury, this is a piece of legislation that had exactly one person in mind: Donald Trump. Hence its short title: the “Disgraced Former Protectees Act.’’ Bill of attainder, anyone?

Thompson later noted that he wasn’t recommending that former protectees go unprotected in prison. Rather, “prison authorities would be responsible for the protection of all inmates regardless of previous Secret Service protection.” Jeffrey Epstein is unavailable for comment.

I think it unlikely that this purely vindictive piece of legislation will ever become law, but you never know. If it does, it will be worth remembering who helped put a former president in mortal danger.

But my real point in bringing up this extraordinary episode is to underscore the creative malice it displays. No one on the conservative side of the aisle would ever think up something so clever and so potentially deadly. This point can be generalized. The melancholy truth is that the left is much better, much more adroit and uncompromising, about weaponizing the instruments of political life than the right. What they care about is power, pure and simple. Fair play, following the rules, respecting the canons of political precedent: none of those things is in their vocabulary.

Or, rather, they are in their vocabulary as slogans but are never activated as genuine principles. Anyone hoping to shame them or to appeal to their better nature, their oath of office or the interests of their constituents will be sorely disappointed. They are far beyond the reach of shame.

And pointing out the large element of projection in their behavior — the fact that many things that they accuse their opponents of are the very things they themselves are guilty of — will cut no ice with them. It worked to say that Donald Trump was a Russian or Chinese asset, didn’t it? And as for overturning “Our Democracy™,” that seems to be something the left is proud to have been doing themselves even as they accuse Donald Trump of it.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s June 2024 World edition.