In June 2021, Voice of America reported:
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that jailed opposition leader Alexey Navalny got what he deserved when he was sentenced to prison.
According to VoA, Navalny was sentenced to 2.5 years in jail “for violating terms of a suspended sentence he had been given after a 2014 embezzlement conviction he has claimed was politically motivated.”
Back in January 2021, the Washington Post reported that Navalny had three criminal investigations going on against him, “all of them politically motivated” according to Navalny himself. Soon thereafter, President Joe Biden strongly condemned the imprisonment of Navalny as “politically motivated” and part of efforts by the Russian president to “suppress freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.”
Biden also demanded Navalny’s immediate and unconditional release.
Such are things in totalitarian Russia. Now, fast forward to March 30, 2023 and the United States of America:
Former President Donald Trump has been indicted as part of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office’s years-long investigation, possibly for hush money payments. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has been investigating Trump for hush money payments made leading up to the 2016 presidential election.
This indictment is so obviously political, so blatantly an effort at stopping a political opponent to the sitting American president, that it is surprising there is even a debate over this.
The political nature of DA Bragg’s case manifests itself in two ways. First, there is the legal nature of the case—or lack thereof. In order to get a conviction, Bragg will have to go to such extremes that his case will be blown open as nothing but a Putin-style show trial. Maybe he is willing to do a political hack job; maybe he has been promised a high-ranking job in President Biden’s administration after 2024. I have no idea—but Bragg, who previously decided that the case against Trump was too weak to even consider, has apparently found a new, very lucrative reason to go after the former president.
That reason cannot be legal. Already when the first rumors of an indictment started flying around, Jonathan Turley with The Hill pointed out the extremely thin legal ground for Bragg’s case. According to Turley, the Manhattan DA, elected to prosecute New York state law, is trying to get a case to court under federal law:
Although it may be politically popular, the case is legally pathetic. Bragg is struggling to twist state laws to effectively prosecute a federal case long ago rejected by the Justice Department against Trump over his payment of “hush money” to former stripper Stormy Daniels. … It is extremely difficult to show that paying money to cover up an embarrassing affair was done for election purposes as opposed to an array of obvious other reasons.
District Attorney Bragg apparently wants to show that Trump was engaging in election interference. Specifically, he would have had to try to change the outcome of the 2016 presidential election by bribing Stormy Daniels to shut up. Never mind that Daniels herself, according to several media outlets, appears to have changed her story back and forth about what kind of relationship she did (not) have with Trump.
As Turley notes, at least one federal prosecutor has already declined to pursue the case, on the grounds that it was virtually impossible to prove that Trump violated federal law. Furthermore, Turley explains, “the Federal Election Commission chair also expressed doubts” about Trump engaging in any wrongdoing.
Turley, a legal scholar in his own right, was joined on Thursday—the day of the indictment filing—by a host of legal experts on, e.g. Fox News, commenting on the weakness of the case against Trump. The fact that other prosecutors, and even the federal Justice Department, have declined to indict Trump in this case, exposes Bragg’s indictment as a pure political hack job.
Since its only foundation is political, if Bragg even gets to a trial he will have to twist, crease, bend, and squeeze his case through whatever court or courts will have to deal with it. He will also have to exhibit extreme bias in selecting a jury that will find Trump guilty regardless of the evidence presented—and refuted—in court. How he will do this is a conundrum, to say the least: the defendant’s attorneys are just as involved in jury selection as the prosecutors are. Bragg cannot just cherrypick ardent Trump haters to be on the jury.
In other words, the first problem with the case against Trump is that it can only produce the outcome that Bragg and other Democrats want, if it becomes a purebred political show trial. To get a conviction, Bragg will have to expose himself as a henchman for those who consider Trump a threat to their political power. Only the most delusional Trump haters will remain convinced that a jurisprudential farce convicting Trump, was actually unbiased practice of law.
The second problem with Bragg’s indictment is that he is an elected Democrat. America still elects many of its prosecutors, which has both problems and merits. In most cases, the elected DA is held accountable for his or her conduct before well-informed voters; to give a small example, in 2022 the voters in Laramie County, Wyoming, ousted their DA after she had been increasingly soft on crime for four years. There was actually a campaign against her from organized voters, who rallied their neighbors into electing a new district attorney, one who would uphold the law with, as voters saw it, impartiality.
Therefore, the very fact that Manhattan DA Bragg is elected, is not in itself a problem. What makes his position problematic is the combination of the virtually non-existing legal ground for the indictment and the fact that Bragg and Biden belong to the same political party. As it happens, Donald Trump is by far the leading presumptive Republican candidate against Biden in next year’s election. For this reason, all it takes to tarnish Bragg’s Trump indictment is to tie Biden’s interests in re-election to Bragg’s interest in furthering his own political career.
I scratch your back, you scratch mine.
However, the politically corrupt nature of this case does not stop there. Politics always has a monetary dimension to it, in Europe as well as in America. Every person who wants to get elected to anything here in the USA, even to coroner in some remote county in north-east Nevada, raises money for his or her campaign. It can be $1,000 or $1 billion—political campaigning costs money, and that money has to come from somewhere. The bigger the campaign, the more one’s donors emanate from established sources; the more important the office one runs for, the more politically influential donors one will have to court.
It is fairly well known who funded Bragg’s campaign. After having worked 17 years in American politics, I can say this about campaign donations: you do not get influential sponsors of this rank, with such deep pockets, without also getting a political leash around your neck. Prosecutor or no prosecutor, money speaks a loud language.
Since Bragg and Biden have not only the Democrat party in common, but also campaign donors, it is high time to ask what political interests they are aligned with. More importantly, we must now recognize that those interests are ready to abuse the judicial system for their own political agenda.
Or, to put it in a more pointed way: other than the technical detail that Trump has only been indicted so far, while Alexei Navalny was prosecuted, what difference is there between the two cases?
The painful but no longer deniable answer is that there are no such differences, at least of any material nature. President Biden would benefit if Trump was found guilty, just like President Putin benefited from the sentencing of Navalny. In both cases, an allegedly impartial legal system goes after a prominent opponent to the sitting president; the legal case is frail at best, bogus at worst.
In both Navalny’s and Trump’s cases, the government’s prosecuting attorney must reasonably know that his box is empty. Yet Trump’s case, like Navalny’s before him, is moved forward on purely political merits. It is simply a waste of time to deny the political nature of the Trump indictment. There is too much at stake here, to debate the trivial over the prominent.
There is no doubt in my mind that the people who convinced Alvin Bragg to move forward with his indictment against Trump are desperate to get the former president out of the way. Whatever they have to hide, they are willing to keep it hidden in perpetuity. In fact, their desperation is at such a level that they are willing to put the former president through a fully political show trial. They want him out of the way in the 2024 presidential election with such fervor, that they will disregard the significant, permanent damage that the case will do to the American justice system.
In fact, they might even welcome that damage. It will show anyone who opposes the political machine in America’s inner political circles that if the machine so decides, it can get anyone tried and convicted, no matter their guilt.
The indictment of former president Trump puts the spotlight on a very disturbing trend in American politics: the slow transition of a constitutional republic into a totalitarian state.
No, this is not a tin-foil hat statement. This is the logical, inevitable consequence of the Trump indictment. Consider what a totalitarian state looks like: its foremost character trait is the absolute concentration of power in as few hands as possible. Government powers are concentrated, not divided as in the American constitutional republic, which divides three branches of government. By politically corrupting the judiciary, totalitarians—whoever they are—can subjugate the judiciary.
The forces that politicize the judicial system do so in order to make it serve the interests of the legislative and executive branches.
This is where America is today. She may not take further steps into the dark dungeons of authoritarianism. The Trump indictment is only the beginning of the totalitarian transformation of America. The next step will be to concentrate more power to the president, at the expense of the legislature. Just like the Venezuelan parliament has been demoted almost into oblivion, the Russian Duma has been legally and politically neutered.
America has not yet taken that step. But unless a radical course change happens, that is where she is headed.
The Day America Became Russia
In June 2021, Voice of America reported:
According to VoA, Navalny was sentenced to 2.5 years in jail “for violating terms of a suspended sentence he had been given after a 2014 embezzlement conviction he has claimed was politically motivated.”
Back in January 2021, the Washington Post reported that Navalny had three criminal investigations going on against him, “all of them politically motivated” according to Navalny himself. Soon thereafter, President Joe Biden strongly condemned the imprisonment of Navalny as “politically motivated” and part of efforts by the Russian president to “suppress freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.”
Biden also demanded Navalny’s immediate and unconditional release.
Such are things in totalitarian Russia. Now, fast forward to March 30, 2023 and the United States of America:
This indictment is so obviously political, so blatantly an effort at stopping a political opponent to the sitting American president, that it is surprising there is even a debate over this.
The political nature of DA Bragg’s case manifests itself in two ways. First, there is the legal nature of the case—or lack thereof. In order to get a conviction, Bragg will have to go to such extremes that his case will be blown open as nothing but a Putin-style show trial. Maybe he is willing to do a political hack job; maybe he has been promised a high-ranking job in President Biden’s administration after 2024. I have no idea—but Bragg, who previously decided that the case against Trump was too weak to even consider, has apparently found a new, very lucrative reason to go after the former president.
That reason cannot be legal. Already when the first rumors of an indictment started flying around, Jonathan Turley with The Hill pointed out the extremely thin legal ground for Bragg’s case. According to Turley, the Manhattan DA, elected to prosecute New York state law, is trying to get a case to court under federal law:
District Attorney Bragg apparently wants to show that Trump was engaging in election interference. Specifically, he would have had to try to change the outcome of the 2016 presidential election by bribing Stormy Daniels to shut up. Never mind that Daniels herself, according to several media outlets, appears to have changed her story back and forth about what kind of relationship she did (not) have with Trump.
As Turley notes, at least one federal prosecutor has already declined to pursue the case, on the grounds that it was virtually impossible to prove that Trump violated federal law. Furthermore, Turley explains, “the Federal Election Commission chair also expressed doubts” about Trump engaging in any wrongdoing.
Turley, a legal scholar in his own right, was joined on Thursday—the day of the indictment filing—by a host of legal experts on, e.g. Fox News, commenting on the weakness of the case against Trump. The fact that other prosecutors, and even the federal Justice Department, have declined to indict Trump in this case, exposes Bragg’s indictment as a pure political hack job.
Since its only foundation is political, if Bragg even gets to a trial he will have to twist, crease, bend, and squeeze his case through whatever court or courts will have to deal with it. He will also have to exhibit extreme bias in selecting a jury that will find Trump guilty regardless of the evidence presented—and refuted—in court. How he will do this is a conundrum, to say the least: the defendant’s attorneys are just as involved in jury selection as the prosecutors are. Bragg cannot just cherrypick ardent Trump haters to be on the jury.
In other words, the first problem with the case against Trump is that it can only produce the outcome that Bragg and other Democrats want, if it becomes a purebred political show trial. To get a conviction, Bragg will have to expose himself as a henchman for those who consider Trump a threat to their political power. Only the most delusional Trump haters will remain convinced that a jurisprudential farce convicting Trump, was actually unbiased practice of law.
The second problem with Bragg’s indictment is that he is an elected Democrat. America still elects many of its prosecutors, which has both problems and merits. In most cases, the elected DA is held accountable for his or her conduct before well-informed voters; to give a small example, in 2022 the voters in Laramie County, Wyoming, ousted their DA after she had been increasingly soft on crime for four years. There was actually a campaign against her from organized voters, who rallied their neighbors into electing a new district attorney, one who would uphold the law with, as voters saw it, impartiality.
Therefore, the very fact that Manhattan DA Bragg is elected, is not in itself a problem. What makes his position problematic is the combination of the virtually non-existing legal ground for the indictment and the fact that Bragg and Biden belong to the same political party. As it happens, Donald Trump is by far the leading presumptive Republican candidate against Biden in next year’s election. For this reason, all it takes to tarnish Bragg’s Trump indictment is to tie Biden’s interests in re-election to Bragg’s interest in furthering his own political career.
I scratch your back, you scratch mine.
However, the politically corrupt nature of this case does not stop there. Politics always has a monetary dimension to it, in Europe as well as in America. Every person who wants to get elected to anything here in the USA, even to coroner in some remote county in north-east Nevada, raises money for his or her campaign. It can be $1,000 or $1 billion—political campaigning costs money, and that money has to come from somewhere. The bigger the campaign, the more one’s donors emanate from established sources; the more important the office one runs for, the more politically influential donors one will have to court.
It is fairly well known who funded Bragg’s campaign. After having worked 17 years in American politics, I can say this about campaign donations: you do not get influential sponsors of this rank, with such deep pockets, without also getting a political leash around your neck. Prosecutor or no prosecutor, money speaks a loud language.
Since Bragg and Biden have not only the Democrat party in common, but also campaign donors, it is high time to ask what political interests they are aligned with. More importantly, we must now recognize that those interests are ready to abuse the judicial system for their own political agenda.
Or, to put it in a more pointed way: other than the technical detail that Trump has only been indicted so far, while Alexei Navalny was prosecuted, what difference is there between the two cases?
The painful but no longer deniable answer is that there are no such differences, at least of any material nature. President Biden would benefit if Trump was found guilty, just like President Putin benefited from the sentencing of Navalny. In both cases, an allegedly impartial legal system goes after a prominent opponent to the sitting president; the legal case is frail at best, bogus at worst.
In both Navalny’s and Trump’s cases, the government’s prosecuting attorney must reasonably know that his box is empty. Yet Trump’s case, like Navalny’s before him, is moved forward on purely political merits. It is simply a waste of time to deny the political nature of the Trump indictment. There is too much at stake here, to debate the trivial over the prominent.
There is no doubt in my mind that the people who convinced Alvin Bragg to move forward with his indictment against Trump are desperate to get the former president out of the way. Whatever they have to hide, they are willing to keep it hidden in perpetuity. In fact, their desperation is at such a level that they are willing to put the former president through a fully political show trial. They want him out of the way in the 2024 presidential election with such fervor, that they will disregard the significant, permanent damage that the case will do to the American justice system.
In fact, they might even welcome that damage. It will show anyone who opposes the political machine in America’s inner political circles that if the machine so decides, it can get anyone tried and convicted, no matter their guilt.
The indictment of former president Trump puts the spotlight on a very disturbing trend in American politics: the slow transition of a constitutional republic into a totalitarian state.
No, this is not a tin-foil hat statement. This is the logical, inevitable consequence of the Trump indictment. Consider what a totalitarian state looks like: its foremost character trait is the absolute concentration of power in as few hands as possible. Government powers are concentrated, not divided as in the American constitutional republic, which divides three branches of government. By politically corrupting the judiciary, totalitarians—whoever they are—can subjugate the judiciary.
The forces that politicize the judicial system do so in order to make it serve the interests of the legislative and executive branches.
This is where America is today. She may not take further steps into the dark dungeons of authoritarianism. The Trump indictment is only the beginning of the totalitarian transformation of America. The next step will be to concentrate more power to the president, at the expense of the legislature. Just like the Venezuelan parliament has been demoted almost into oblivion, the Russian Duma has been legally and politically neutered.
America has not yet taken that step. But unless a radical course change happens, that is where she is headed.
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