“Imagine if Trump loses the election and the Supremes throw out the Bragg case”
To the British, fed by news out of the U.S. dominated by the incompetent and superficial BBC and mainstream media, former and would-be President Donald Trump is simply a criminal indicted by a fair and worthy legal system.
That is a mistake. Trump has been attacked by Democrats using government money to exploit a weakness in the U.S. legal system. On the surface, U.S. law looks a lot like ours. But there are crucial differences that devalue Trump’s conviction and the other spurious, concocted cases. The crucial participants – prosecutors and judges – are often elected. (I say “often” because states have many different variations in their legal systems). The media reports this as though it is simply the justice system in action. In reality, it is simply sordid, political corruption.
For example, the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the widely criticized (by left and right) prosecution of Trump, was elected. As a part of his campaign, he pledged to go after Trump on whatever grounds he could think up.
“when these cases reach the Supreme Court they are often dismissed by large majorities”
Unthinkable in the U.K. But not to Bragg. He did, and won his case, with a bit of help from the judge, another committed Democrat, who made sure testimony from witnesses likely to be on Trump’s side were not heard. The likes of Bragg don’t wait for criminal offences to happen. They target politicians they fear or don’t like and find a law to exploit. This can involve quite an imaginative stretch and when these cases reach the Supreme Court they are often dismissed by large majorities.
The U.S. appeals system, all the way to the Supreme Court, is impressive, thorough and less biased the closer you get to the top, but takes a lot of time. So corrupt Democrats (Republicans don’t seem to do this because they are not such zealots) often use this tactic to derail a political opponent in a campaign which by its nature will be time constrained. Appeals might eventually throw out the cases, but by then the election is over and the bad guys have won.
Cases brought often laughably thin
This is the tactic the Democrats are using to try and derail the Trump campaign by making sure he spends much time in court (looking grumpy, not surprisingly), and crippled by huge legal costs and fines. That was the plan for Trump. But it backfired because the cases brought were often laughably thin gruel. The public realised this, and Trump bounced higher in the opinion polls.
Democrats tried at least 4 times, including the Bragg case, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s January 6 indictment following the first unarmed “insurrection” in the history of the world (delayed by the Supremes), a Colorado attempt to keep Trump off the ballot (Supremes killed it), Georgia’s attempt to convict Trump for daring to question an election result (stumbling because of local DA incompetence), and the attempt to convict Trump of stealing his own papers (died because of legal over-reach). A rape case in New York was also preposterous, with the State watering down its own law on rape to try and ensnare Trump on a laughably weak 20 plus-year old case.
The New York case resulting in the 34 felony convictions was so clearly politically inspired and weak that even the lefties at the New York Times declared it was a bit flimsy, as did the similarly liberal Washington Post. The wringing wet “Economist” said the prosecution was “wrong-headed and counter-productive”, in the sense that Democrats thought they could derail Trump. In fact, it has done the reverse.
Never say never in Britain
Fair-minded Brits will by now have seen that Trump was not the career criminal and convicted felon the Democrats were trying to infer.
Can you imagine this happening in Britain? For a start all prosecutions are handled centrally, so there’s no room for local deviants to go after political or corporate operators they don’t like. Also, the British system demands a solid prima facie case. The Director of Public Prosecutions insists there be at least a case in law to answer. A freelance political operative with a flimsy case wouldn’t get far, although never say never.
In the U.S., the case must usually be approved by a grand jury. Canny DAs can easily manipulate these in jurisdictions that are solidly Democrat, like Lower Manhattan, or Washington DC, to name but a few.
Bragg/Soros link?
Billionaire liberal George Soros has seen the political efficacy of the DA role and has spent tens of millions of dollars backing candidates throughout the country who support causes like abolishing bail and defunding the police. DA Bragg was reportedly financed by Soros. He denied any direct financing, but there is a less direct link because he received money from liberal organisations that also received Soros money, according to the New York Times
Then there’s the backstop of a jury of 12 good persons and true who smell corrupt and unfair prosecutions and throw out cases. The jury in the Mike Lynch/Autonomy/Hewlett Packard criminal case showed that U.S. juries are also capable of independent thought. And Britain can’t be too smug about its juries, who have presided over some horrendous examples of injustice. But at least we haven’t yet allowed this to infect our politics.
U.S. needs legal safety valve
This is a huge problem in the U.S., and its politicians would be wise to add some sort of safety valve to the system that would allow fast access to the Supreme Court if prosecutions, like the Bragg example, were likely to cause huge injustice and have national political repercussions. This would be obvious because of the legal manipulation involved in bringing the case.
Imagine if Trump loses the election and next year, the Supremes throw out the Bragg case?
My next blog will look at the Kamala Harris phenomenon. No doubt by then the managed hype and hysteria behind her campaign orchestrated shamelessly at the Democrat National Convention will have drifted away and Trump will be forging ahead in the race to the White House. The general public, which pays little attention to politics between elections, was shocked when they found out the extent of the lies they had been fed by the media and the Democrat party pretending President Joe Biden was playing with a full deck. It won’t take much media exposure for the floating voters to realise what a hopeless, over-promoted, sham of a candidate is Ms Harris. Biden said she would save democracy, as the millions of primary votes behind him were trashed in favour of Harris with precisely none. I predict outrage after the first antagonistic interview, or Presidential debate, whichever comes first.
If anyone wonders why I should have anything useful to say about U.S. politics, I worked for Reuters based in New York for about 8 years as a reporter and editor through the 70s and 80s. I covered the election results live in November 1980, making sure Reuters was the first to tell the world of Ronald Reagan’s victory. I’ve been a student of U.S. politics ever since.
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