Donald Trump's
Political Prosecutions
Most people,
even most lawyers, don't understand the American System of government. What
made the United States revolutionary was the abolition of royalty. Throughout
human history, every society had a king, emperor, chief, or some kind of
strongman who embodied the sovereignty of the state. Sovereignty means " The position, rank, or power of a supreme ruler or
monarch; royal authority or dominion." Pardoning is one of the prerogatives
of the sovereign.
Thanks to George Washington's refusal to become King of the
United States after the successful end of the War for Independence, the framers
of the Constitution had to find a new site for national sovereignty. The War
for Independence proved that the states under the Articles of Confederation
were an unreliable source of sovereignty, which is why Congress had to create a
Continental Army to fight the British. They settled on "We the People"
in the Constitution. It is the placing of sovereign power in the hands of the
people that made the United States revolutionary, not its independence from
Britain. When Canada and Australia, among others, became independent, they
retained the British monarch as the sovereign.
All the checks and balances of the
federal and state governments are designed to achieve a single, simple task
‒ keeping the sovereign power of the nation in the hands of the people
and out of the hands of the president, Congress, the courts, and the states.
For argument's sake, I'll accept that Trump falsified
business records to pay Stormy Daniels, although I won't accept that every cent
spent by a candidate for federal office is a campaign contribution. Following
the prosecution's absurd argument to its logical conclusion, if a candidate
spends as much as a dime to keep derogatory information about himself from the
public, that's election interference. So, I guess Kennedy interfered with the
1960 election by keeping secret his paying off of the West Virginia sheriffs
and his affair with Judith Exner. According to the prosecution logic,
candidates are required to reveal everything about themselves, even the bad
stuff.
But even if everything the prosecution alleges is true, Trump still
should not have been prosecuted and convicted. The charges against Trump are
all misdemeanors. It is only the tenuous attempt to link them together that
makes them a felony. Plus, anyone who knows anything about the Federal Election
Campaign Act knows it's a worthless, biased document. The Federal Election
Campaign Act doles out tens of millions of public dollars, but only to party
candidates. The rules are written to, in effect, make only Republicans and
Democrats eligible for public funds upfront. Independents get nothing. The
Supreme Court agreed that the Act was unfair but upheld it anyway, arguing that
the stability provided by the two-party system justified the legal bias against
independent candidates. Trump's was a show trial in the best Stalinist
tradition.
Trump has
received 185,798,253 votes so far, compared to 279,406 for Alvin Bragg and none
for Judge Juan Merchan. And Alvin Bragg is no fool. He was reluctant to
prosecute Trump, as his predecessor had declined to do so, but he was forced
into it by his staff. I hate to sound like a racist, which I'm not, but Merchan
was born in Colombia, a nation that has had two low-level left and right-wing
insurgencies continuously since 1960. Merchan's father was in Colombia's
military intelligence.
The US State
Department has four travel advisory categories for foreign travelers: 1.
Exercise normal precautions, 2. Exercise increased caution, 3. Reconsider
travel, and 4. Do Not Travel. Colombia is Level 3: Reconsider
travel due to crime and terrorism. Exercise
increased caution due to civil unrest and kidnapping.
Now, I'm sure Judge
Merchan is a well-qualified, competent jurist. But, the President of the United
States is the only office where the holder is required to be a natural-born
citizen. I just don't think someone who started life living abroad for the
first six years of his life in an unstable society can understand the American
system of government, and Merchan should have recused himself when assigned
Trump's trial, if not dismissed the charge linking the falsified records to
campaign contributions. Ever since the Supreme Court found the Federal Election
Campaign Act to be Constitutional (1976), handed down Forbes v. Arkansas
Educational Television Commission (which allowed the exclusion of independent
candidates from publicly funded forums) (1998), stole the 2000 presidential
election for George W. Bush, and opened political campaigns to unlimited
corporate cash with Citizen's United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), the
legal system has run off the rails when it comes to elections. Indicting Trump
is just another step down the road of the courts disenfranchising "the
people." The people dealt with the allegations against Trump by defeating
him in 2020, and that should have satisfied everyone. After Trump won in 2016,
and his followers were pressuring him to follow up on his threats to jail
Hillary, he said, "She's suffered enough."
As a personal disclaimer, I must say that I did not vote for
Donald Trump and have no intention of doing so this November. However, in
politics, there's an old saying that you can't beat someone with no one, and it
was clear to anyone with an ounce of independent thought that the prosecutions
of Trump are more of a threat to democratic governance than his fraudulent
bookkeeping and violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act. The
indictments rejuvenated his campaign and are monopolizing the public airwaves when
they are urgently needed to consult the people when hammering out government
policy for the next administration. We are at war in the Middle East and
Eastern Europe. The Supreme Court's overturning Roe has sowed chaos and fear
among women (the idea that a woman's Constitutional rights are subject to state
law is absurd because states have no sovereignty other than that explicitly
given to them by the Constitution). The economy is in dangerously bad shape
with surging prices and soaring deficits. Now, are Trump's transgressions
really so important in comparison? Manhattan only had a 42% clearance rate for
Murders, Rape, Robbery, Felony Assault and Burglary in the first quarter of
2024. Were Trump's crimes commensurate with the six weeks of court time and
millions of tax dollars devoted to prosecuting them? If no one is above the
law, I think everyone would agree that bringing justice to the victims of
murder, rape, and robbery deserves at least as much time and effort as prosecuting
Trump's misdemeanors. It is this obvious disproportionality that proves the indictments
are political. It's a textbook SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public
Participation) suit.
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