Democrats are playing a dangerous game
Let's take a close look at "selective prosecution"
New York’s progressive prosecutor Alvin Bragg has finally met a criminal he wants to send to prison.
If he indeed indicts former president Trump, it will be the first time in U.S. history that a former president has been charged with a criminal offense. Most of us will quickly make up our minds about it, then spend the rest of the year arguing our position.
So it’s important for us to get a good understanding of the concept of “selective prosecution.”
It comes down to this: we don't want to live in a society where certain people, especially elites, are above the law; nor do we want prosecutors to abuse their powers to punish political opponents. Both of those extremes are dangerous.
Let’s examine a non-Trump example: tax fraud
Most of us pay our taxes and believe that those who cheat should be punished, and a good example is the “Nanny Tax.”
If you pay any household help, like a babysitter, more than $50 per week, you’re officially an employer, and required by federal law to withhold that person’s taxes, pay Social Security, Medicare taxes and more.
Some may call the failure to do so a minor offense. The federal government can call it felony tax evasion, though, with up to a $250,000 fine. And prison time.
That said, I couldn’t find any cases of people actually going to jail for that crime. Should they?
What if that person’s a candidate for the Supreme Court? For those of you old enough to remember, this exact issue derailed two Supreme Court nominees in “Nannygate” of 1983.
How about if a local prosecutor just targeted those who contributed to his political opponent? Or just went after people with the courage to post “only women can have babies” on Facebook?
Selective prosecution is a legal defense, where the accused can show not that he was innocent of the charges, but that the prosecutor brought charges for biased reasons.
Remember Hillary Clinton?
Ever since the Clintons ran Arkansas, they always seemed to be one step ahead of the sheriff, but in 2016 things again got dicey with the exposure of a hidden email server she had created.
She did so to avoid having her State Department emails be searchable in the event of a legal request, and when Congress requested those emails she had them destroyed. It was a pretty clear violation of the law, but prosecutors needed to decide if it was serious enough to charge a presidential candidate.
They didn’t, under the concept that no substantial candidate should be targeted for criminal prosecution — especially by the opposing party — unless it was serious enough that anyone else who did it would similarly be charged.
Most Republicans disagreed. Donald Trump telling her “you’d be in jail” if he became President, and chants of “lock her up” were a routine part of his rallies.
But now that shoe’s on the other foot.
A prosecutor who’s hunting Trump
Alvin Bragg isn’t seeking justice, but is playing hardball politics with a textbook case of selective prosecution.
While Bragg routinely defaults to letting violent criminals pass through the system with minimal problem, prosecuting Trump for what’s essentially a non-violent misdemeanor is not about justice, it’s about punishing a political opponent.
And while most on the left have yet to recover from TDS, Republicans will see it clearly. Even most anti-Trump Republicans — about half the the party — will rally around the former president not because of fealty, but because of the naked injustice of the justice system.
In the short-term, this will undoubtedly help Trump. Personally, I’ve had enough of his Kardashian-like drama, but it’s difficult to watch him stalked by those abusing their power. It will re-gain him supporters who have even less faith in the system.
It may help him in the long-term as well. There are Democrats who want nothing more than to have Trump re-nominated, believing, with some good justification, that he’s too divisive to win a general election.
Yet … those were the same people who were laughing as he started his 2016 campaign and blubbering when he won it.
— Ken
And then there’s this …
John Edwards famously paid his mistress and the mother of his child while he was running for president, and was cleared of all charges having to do with campaign finance. Ken, I have to take issue with you regarding your comment about "Kardashian-like drama". Who created the drama, the unwarranted impeachments, the J6 "kangaroo court", the never-ending Trump-bashing, ridiculing anything he said or did, never giving credit for any achievements? Not Trump, but the democrat party, the entrenched RINOs, and the MSM who work for them. (BTW, did you ever read "The Grey Lady Winked"?) I live in Northern California and am very very familiar with TDS.
If there were Democrats running around unindicted after circumventing campaign finance laws to cover up an embarrassing secret that might have hurt their campaign, I'd see a fairness problem. But that's not the situation here. There was a crime here, and Michael Cohen already went to prison over it. If Trump is implicated too, he needs to be held accountable.
I don't care if being indicted helps or hurts Trump politically, although my guess would be it hurts him in the long run. That's irrelevant. He's subject to the same laws as everybody else. Due process needs to run its course without regard for partisanship.
It's not like Bragg is going all Captain Ahab on Trump either. Bragg has taken heat from his own prosecutors for hesitating to charge Trump for financial crimes.