Lawfare and the Corruption of the American Legal System

Former U.S. President Donald Trump sits at the defense table with his attorneys Christopher Kise (L) and Alina Habba (R) in N.Y. State Supreme Court, in New York City, on Dec. 7, 2023. Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Pool/Getty Images

Commentary

The Joe Biden Democrats’ effort to wage lawfare to attack their opponents is shocking. It is beyond anything we have ever seen in the American system.

This goes far beyond the obvious, stunningly visible assault on President Donald Trump in four jurisdictions (New York, District of Columbia, Georgia, and Florida).

Just ask No Labels’ leaders. They have worked diligently to get their movement on the ballot of every state. They will tell you that Democrats have used the legal system to drain No Labels’ money and time to simply prevent them from getting ballot. The No Labels effort is being opposed by what might be called a “no competitors” strategy of the Biden Democrats.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been hit with an even more insidious legal maneuver. As Mark Steyn observed:

“[A] man with the highest name-recognition in American history, mainly because his father and his uncle were both assassinated, has been denied Secret Service protection by personal order of his own party’s Homeland Security Secretary. Robert F Kennedy Jr is the first candidate to have his security application rejected in fifty-five years ... which is to say since his namesake dad was killed.

“Odd. If one were conspiratorially inclined, one might begin to wonder if the Deep State isn’t inclined to teach a brute, hard lesson in what happens when scions of blue-chip brands are minded to wander off the reservation.”

Then, there is the all-out effort to destroy President Trump through lawfare. President Trump faces the most extraordinary wave of attacks facing any major American leader in the 248 years since we declared our independence.

The total corruption of the New York judicial system has been made visible on a scale none of us could have predicted.

Of course, if you have read Tom Wolfe’s 1987 book “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” you might not be surprised by the depth of corruption in the New York legal system.

The concept of a fraud trial with no victims, no complaints, and no money lost is an example of political prosecution in disguise. The punitive scale is astonishing. According to The New York Times, there is a $450 million fine (which must be paid to enter the appeals process). Further, the President and his two sons are exiled from doing business in New York for three years—and no New York banks can lend money to pay or post a bond during the appeal.

Meanwhile, a woman who could not remember what year she had allegedly encountered then-citizen Trump some 30 years ago was awarded $83 million in another New York travesty of justice.

Victor Davis Hanson captured the absurdity of this case:

“The [E. Jean] Carroll suit was largely subsidized by Reid Hoffman the billionaire capitalist, and mega-donor to the Democratic Party and leftwing causes .... Trump was facing ... a leftwing claimant, a quite hostile leftwing judge, and a leftwing New York jury.”

Hanson went on to say that of the five cases being brought against Trump:

“Observers have pointed out dozens of inconsistencies in [Carroll’s] story.

“It was never clear what were the preliminaries that supposedly (Trump denies meeting her) led both, allegedly, willingly to retreat together to a department store dressing room, where during normal business hours the alleged violence took place.

“Moreover, the sexual assault complaint came forward decades post facto—and only after Trump was running for and then president.”

Hanson noted that the corrupt New York legislature in 2022 passed a law allowing Carroll to sue even though the statute of limitations had long been reached.

While Hanson focused on the $83 million Carroll case, former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy wrote, “[T]he case brought against him by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg is such a nakedly partisan abuse of power and an affront to the principle of equal justice .... DA Bragg’s prosecution is the most rigged thing I’ve ever seen.”

Steyn’s column “Appeal This” captured where the corruption of our system has taken us:

“Indeed, there is so little equality before the law in America that a central tenet of that equality—the right to a lawyer—is utterly dead. If you make the mistake of representing Trump, you’ll be disbarred and/or criminally charged.

“So that’s the continuum—from my lousy million to Trump’s third-of-a-billion. And, as Giuliani and Peter Navarro and vdare.com and a whole bunch of others have discovered, there’s a place for you somewhere between those two numbers.

“This is the criminalisation of opposition—a core definition of unfree societies, but one which Letitia James, the disgraceful Attorney General of New York, is enthusiastically signing on to. By pretending that what’s happening is normal—as Nikki Haley and Conservative Inc are doing—you do no service to the remnants of the republic.”

While we need to worry about freedom in other countries, we also must recognize how much the corruption of the Biden Democrats has eroded freedom here in America.

Only a decisive election victory for reform can save us from sliding into a far more repressive future.

From Gingrich360.com

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.