Guest Post by Alex Berenson
And what – if anything – can be done to undo the damage is not clear (aside from a Trump landslide, followed by a Trump promise to forswear lawfare, both very unlikely)
What exactly did Democrats think would happen?
For a year, Democratic prosecutors in one of the bluest states in the nation have worked overtime to bankrupt and imprison Donald Trump.
The civil fraud case against Trump, over loans he repaid in full, was bad. The felony indictment for misclassifying accounting records was worse, built on bizarre legal theories and the testimony of an admitted liar.
With the help of friendly judges, the prosecutors won both. Trump, the Republican leader and the favorite to beat the incumbent Democratic president in November, now faces nearly $500 million in fines and four years in prison – for “crimes” that can barely be explained.
This may be the law, but is not justice.
As a X post now viewed 73 million times put it:
The first felony conviction of a former US President wasn’t for the Iraq or Afghanistan wars, illegal CIA coups, drone striking weddings, or spying on Americans… It was because Trump misclassified a $130,000 payment for a porn star’s NDA [non-disclosure agreement].
Republicans are furious. Rightly.
Now they are openly threatening to strike back. As the New York Times wrote [paywalled] this morning:
Republican allies of Donald J. Trump are calling for revenge prosecutions and other retaliatory measures against Democrats in response to his felony conviction in New York…
G.O.P. leaders in and out of government have demanded that elected Republicans use every available instrument of power against Democrats, including targeted investigations and prosecutions.
Like the Times or not, it has accurately summarized where we stand.
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I understand the desire to escalate – for retribution, and theoretically deterrence too.
But this way lies madness.
More than madness. This way lies serious risks to the future of the United States.
I don’t think I’m exaggerating.
Trump was uniquely vulnerable. Even though he now lives in Florida, he was a New York resident for most of his life.
But what if local prosecutors find ways around the jurisdictional hurdles and succeed in hanging criminal indictments on out-of-state politicians from the other party? What if they succeed in winning convictions in front of friendly juries? (Mega-donors may be even more vulnerable, because of their second homes. Think of Californians with ranches in Wyoming, New Yorkers with Florida mansions. )
The logical next step will be for the defendants – now felons – to appeal to their home states for help in nullifying or refusing to recognize those convictions.
When states will not even recognize each other’s basic legal authority, they are hardly part of a more perfect union.
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(Turn that flag upside down)
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The law and politics have always been intertwined.
Politicians become lawmakers when they win, after all. And Republicans are at least partly to blame for escalating these games by impeaching Bill Clinton in 1998.
But no one can doubt what has happened to Donald Trump in New York represents a major escalation of what people on both sides are now calling lawfare.
So what happens now?
If Biden wins, Democrats and Republicans may well see the Democratic strategy as successful. Trump was leading before the verdict, after all. Republicans will be furious, Democrats triumphant. How will either side back down?
And if Trump wins, he has already said he may use the Department of Justice aggressively against his opponents, potentially including Hillary Clinton and the Biden family.
Of course, Trump could back off that promise.
But it is hard to imagine him doing so, unless he and the Republican Party feel that the voters have already punished Democrats for his legal troubles. In other words, he would need to win so easily that he feels he can be magnanimous in victory (a style that doesn’t come naturally to him anyway). The 2016 and 2020 elections suggest that outcome is highly unlikely. Not impossible, but highly unlikely.
Trump’s sentencing hearing is barely a month away.
It is going to be a long hot summer.’
And a hotter fall.
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Giving banana republics a bad name.
We are not a banana republic.
We are a democratic banana republic.
Minus bananas.
Constitutional, Representative, Democratic Banana Republic
We’re a “democrat” banana republic.
No turning the other cheek. No “civility” for Democrat swine. They want war? Good.
I’m still thinking about how I’m going to “celebrate” if the President gets tossed in the cooler.
I believe the time is approaching when if half of the buildings in America have to be burnt to get the Democrats out of the country, that may be considered an acceptable cost.
I fail to see how endless convictions of these shitheads would be bad? STOP DEFENDING THEM and yes i get that you do not get that your are but YOU ARE, THEY ALL NEED TO HANG along with anyone in the way
Second.
Lock them ALL up !!!!!!!!!
CONgress, SCOTUS and presidents past and present.
CARTRIDGE BOX
Arizona is already doing that. They have indicted Trump supporters that have never set foot in the state. You can’t play fair with criminal politicians.
Don’t forget the defamation lawsuit on rape when the two people can’t be shown to have ever met. No date, no day of the week, no month of the year, no season of the year the assault supposedly took place and a wide number of years it supposedly happened within one of them.
One witness, a friend that vaguely remember something told her years ago, which is hearsay and not allowable in criminal court. So a multimillion.dollar fine for what, proclaiming his innocence. Oh and the partisan jury gave her more than she was asking for the settlement.
The dress she claimed she was wearing had not yet been made according to the manufacturer and her testimony was word for word from a script about a woman raped in Bergdorf’s from “Law & Order.”
“And if Trump wins, he has already said he may use the Department of Justice aggressively against his opponents, potentially including Hillary Clinton and the Biden family.”
Yeah, right. I remember well the “lock her up” slogan from his 2016 campaign, then in his election night victory speech he said “Hillary has worked very long and very hard over a long period of time, and we owe her a major debt of gratitude for her service to our country”. I knew right at that moment that he was a total fraud, and he confirmed that assessment almost daily while he was in office. Trump isn’t going to do shit. His next term (yes, he is going to “win” in November) will just be more of the same crap as his first term, continuously filling up the swamp.
Trump taunted her, he didn’t lock her up. He should have.
He was President, not a cop.
Every candidate says shit to get in office.
Every Fucking One.
Jesus Christ as President couldn’t satisfy someone of the people on hear, they would call him a liar.
Many here on this site essentially do call Jesus a liar . One of the big problems that some folks cant seem to grasp is that the executive branch thinks it runs the president rather than the president running the executive branch
They don’t ‘think’ they do. They DO.
Trump and Hillary are longtime buddies. The media doesn’t show any of that. Trump and chuck Schumer are old pals too. It’s all a big show and Trump supporter idiots fall for it like a kid at a WWF wrestling show.
Were not are. The left hated Trump when he came out against Obama. They certainly feel betrayed by Trump. Things change. Always have, always will.
Yes, the Left does indeed hate Trump, but that is because they are just as fooled as the Right. They haven’t figured out either that it is all theater, and Trump is still essentially the same liberal New York Democrat that he was before he switched to become a Republican for his 2016 campaign.
No politician can control who or why someone endorses them. Some endorsements are meant to piss people off and change their vote, not support the candidate. Endorsements are useless.
Policies are what count.
.
.
okay
The United States may have reached an El Salvador moment.
Most people reading this will have some knowledge of the last few years developments in El Salvador. Basically, the country had gotten so dangerous, so corrupt, so completely taken over by violent gangs and drug dealers, that the President had the military perform mass arrest, quick military style trials, and harsh incarceration. Tens of thousands of gang members were rounded up and convicted with only cursory trials. Human rights activists around the world complained about the legal shortcuts taken. Result? Almost overnight the country went from being one of the most dangerous, most corrupt, most unstable nations in the world to being one of the nicest. My point? Our legal system, as it was designed and intended to operate, was for a nation with only mild corruption. We cannot get back to that state where we have the Rule of Law by working within a legal system that is already broken. The criminals run the system. We may be at the point that the ONLY WAY to return to a true rule of law is to go to THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE first. Screw the niceties. We are fighting an enemy who has no problem with using our rules against us while they themselves break every rule which we still obey. What we are doing right now is not working. Maybe time to try something else.
Use the system against the system.