The injustice of lawfare against Trump

According to President Biden, not since the Civil War has American freedom and democracy been so under assault. In his State of the Union address, Biden characterized January 6 as a day when “insurrectionists stormed this very Capitol and placed a dagger at the throat of American democracy.” With this kind of rhetoric emanating from the White House, it is no wonder a good portion of the country believes that any use of the legal system is justified to protect us from a second Donald Trump administration. 

Except… that is not how the law works. By stretching their prosecutorial powers to the breaking point, Democrats are perverting the very system they are claiming to protect. 

Take the charade in New York. Democratic attorney general Letitia James and Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg are prosecuting what are at best misdemeanor transgressions for the purpose of annihilating Trump and the Trump Organization. In applying for the first time ever a civil fraud law in a case with no fraud victims, James obtained the eye-watering fine of $354 million. (The bond has since been cut to $175 million.) And her crusade is working — Trump has apparently reached out to dozens of insurers, none of whom are prepared to provide him bond while the judgment is under appeal. 

Not to be outdone, Bragg is seeking to imprison Trump for an alleged $130,000 of inaccurate accounting entries. His prosecution theory is so laughable even leftist legal analysts struggle to defend it with a straight face. 

And yet, with the assistance of elected Democratic justices Arthur Engoron and Juan Merchan, respectively, Trump never stood a chance. James’s civil award will take years to wind through the appellate process before he receives relief. And any criminal conviction of Trump by a New York jury will be trumpeted by Bragg in the short term despite the fact it will be likely overturned in time. But by that point the short-term damage — which is the real point of the prosecution — will have been done. 

Then you have the farce of a racketeering case that is disintegrating before our eyes due to the astonishing incompetence of Democratic district attorney Fani Willis. Even before her absurd ethics violations came to light, it was clear Willis was misusing a law generally reserved for mafia families to prosecute a series of unrelated conspiracies, many of which do not even constitute felony crimes. Once again, future correction of this miscarriage of justice will be of little help if a Fulton Country jury decides to convict Trump of any of the farcical charges he is facing. 

Then you have Merrick Garland’s pit-bull, special counsel Jack Smith, who is doing absolutely anything he can to try and convict Trump before this year’s election. Smith spent years investigating the January 6 events and then launched his indictment just in time for a 2024 trial. The problem for Smith, however, is that he lacks the basis to charge Trump with insurrection and instead patched together a combination of obstruction, fraud and civil rights laws to support his case. There remains a good chance that most or all of Smith’s January 6 case will crumble under Supreme Court scrutiny — but he’s going full-throttle nonetheless. 

Then of course there is the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case — the only one in the mix which appears premised on solid legal footing. The problem, of course, is that it screams hypocrisy when you consider that Biden appears to be a habitual offender over his forty-plus years in elected office by hoarding classified materials in six locations among his homes and offices. It is also hard to square Smith’s efforts to lock up Trump when Hillary Clinton each received a pass for similar conduct. 

And what about the Justice Department’s bar on bringing cases in the lead-up to an election? After skirting the issue for months, Smith’s team finally acknowledged they do not plan to respect the long-standing policy because everyone already knows that candidate Trump is facing federal charge. Got that? Smith charged Trump knowing darn well it would blemish him as a presidential candidate, then uses that as justification to double-tap Trump to ensure maximum damage before the election. 

Together with the nonsensical effort to bar Trump under the Fourteenth Amendment, which was rightfully struck down by a unanimous Supreme Court, that’s six efforts to imprison and bankrupt Trump all timed to prevent him from being elected. For years we have known that Donald Trump’s behavior is clownish, morally questionable and arguably skirts the law. But the turrets of legal weaponry were only pivoted in his direction when it became clear he remained a political force to be reckoned with. 

Biden and the Democrats will no doubt amplify their civil war-esque hysteria to a fever pitch in the coming months. They would have us believe that the greatest nation in history cannot withstand a second term of a seventy-seven-year-old buffoon from Queens. But even if you feel in your bones that Trump is Evil Incarnate, that does not justify weaponizing the legal system to do the job that is rightfully entrusted with the American voter.