Posted on 06/03/2024 5:57:13 AM PDT by Yo-Yo
Yo-Yo Note: Longish read but very good from someone who is NOT a MAGA person.
Ever since Donald Trump emerged as a presidential contender nine years ago, America’s most esteemed scholars and journalists have argued that he was violating democratic norms. Trump, they said, was ignoring the stabilizing, unwritten rules and values of American politics. This was evident in his vulgar language, vilification of immigrants, criticisms of the press, lack of cooperation with the intelligence community, and refusal to accept the 2020 election results.
But the Democrats’ relentless effort to imprison Trump has undermined the rule of law, faith in the criminal justice system, and democratic norms more than anything Trump has ever done.
According to multiple credible sources, President Barack Obama’s Director of the CIA, in the summer of 2016, illegally mobilized foreign spy agencies to target 26 Trump advisors to claim, falsely, that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin controlled Trump.
Then, in January 2017, after Trump had been elected but before he took office, the U.S. Intelligence Community falsely claimedthat Putin had favored the election of Trump when, in reality, the intelligence showed that Putin favored Hillary Clinton.
After taking office, current and former US government intelligence operatives and Democrats falsely claimed that Russian disinformation on social media had resulted in Trump’s election and worked with the Department of Homeland Security to censor social media platforms.
None of this is a defense of Trump. He uses extreme and inflammatory rhetoric, particularly about immigrants, that I strongly disagree with. He was wrong to deny and try to change the results of the 2020 elections. And I think people are right to fear that, if he were re-elected, he could weaponize the government to exact revenge on his political enemies.
But that fear is further proof of the danger of Democrats weaponizing the government. Democrats went far beyond anything Trump did when it came to abusing their political power. After the Supreme Court ruled that Biden could not legally forgive student loans, he did so anyway. By contrast, Trump did not violate any Supreme Court rulings.
It’s true that Trump has criticized judges, journalists, and intelligence agencies, but why is that a bad thing? We have a separation of powers for a reason.
As for the intelligence agencies, they broke the law multiple times in targeting Trump. As for the news media, they deserve criticism for losing the public’s trust after lying about everything from the origins of Covid to the efficacy of the Covid vaccine to the Russiagate hoax.
Or consider the prosecution of Trump for supposedly taking and holding onto classified documents. It’s not obvious that Trump put national security in greater danger than Biden. There is evidence that the Biden administration worked with the National Archives and Department of Justice to demand the confrontation. And there is the possibility that the raid was motivated in order to recover documents related to the Russiagate hoax.
And the abuse of the court system by Democrats in an effort to incarcerate Trump and keep him off the ballot is far more of a violation of norms than anything Trump ever dreamed of.
The recent felony conviction of Trump for falsifying business records relies on the idea that he misclassified campaign payments. Democrats say, “Nobody is above the law,” which is true. But Democrats are wrong to ignore the fact that prosecutors are constantly making choices about whether to pursue certain cases over others. Indeed, Hillary Clinton was found to have mislabeled payments related to the Steele dossier during her 2016 campaign, and she was never prosecuted. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) merely fined Clinton and the Democratic National Convention (DNC)) for this misconduct.
In fact, everything about New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s recent conviction of Trump is abnormal. For starters, Bragg campaigned on the promise to prosecute Trump. He turned the misdemeanor of falsifying business records into a felony by tying it to election interference. The case was so weak that both the Department of Justice and the former DA refused to prosecute it.
The judge in the case donated to Biden and his daughter is the president of a Democratic Party fundraising firm whose clients include Rep. Adam Schiff, who led the Russiagate hoax. The judge told the jurors that they didn’t need to agree on what crime Trump intended to commit by falsifying records.
The case confused even legal experts. “At the start of closing arguments,” wrote legal scholar Jonathan Turley, “most honest observers were still wondering what the prosecutors were alleging as to the crime that Trump was allegedly concealing with the falsification of business records.”
Even CNN’s top legal scholar, Elie Honig, who is also a former colleague of Bragg, said the trial violated norms. “Prosecutors Got Trump But They Contorted the Law,” explained Honig in New York Magazine. “The charges against Trump are obscure and nearly entirely unprecedented,” he said. “In fact, no state prosecutor— in New York, or Wyoming, or anywhere — has ever charged federal election laws as a direct or predicate state crime against anyone for anything. None. Ever.”
All of this is a radical change from the ideals of the Democratic Party just a few years ago. In the 1970s and 1980s, Democrats fought to restrict and reform the intelligence community so that it would stop spying on American citizens for their political activities. Democrats defended a high standard for free speech, including the right of Nazis to march through neighborhoods of Holocaust survivors. And since the 1990s, Democrats have raised the alarm about the abuse of prosecutorial power and elected progressive prosecutors, including Bragg, to reduce prosecutions of nonviolent crimes.
Today, Democrats are pioneering new ways to weaponize the government....
Re “… Trump, they said, was ignoring the stabilizing, unwritten rules and values of American politics. This was evident in his vulgar language, vilification of immigrants, criticisms of the press, lack of cooperation with the intelligence community, and refusal to accept the 2020 election results...”
Translation… “This is a Republican Man who actually fights back and doesn’t take the Democrats crap and vital tactics… We can’t have that…”
Wrong to deny the results of the stolen election?
EVERYONE who is not a liberal moron can tell it was stolen.
The movie ‘2000 mules’ ALONE contains enough evidence to overturn the election. How is it totally ignored?
He sees the corruption but he is blind to the reality. Trump had every right to protest and call in question the 2020 election. Biden did not legally win that election. I don’t care what corrupted courts deemed “worth their time”.
I see nothing Trump ever said or tweeted any more offensive to people of all stripes than what Biden and the democrat party have uttered now and in the past.
I am glad he sees the corruption but Shellenberger needs to pull the curtain all the way open and face reality.
Bkmk
From Honig article
“ So, to inflate the charges up to the lowest-level felony (Class E, on a scale of Class A through E) — and to electroshock them back to life within the longer felony statute of limitations — the DA alleged that the falsification of business records was committed “with intent to commit another crime.” Here, according to prosecutors, the “another crime” is a New York State election-law violation, which in turn incorporates three separate “unlawful means”: federal campaign crimes, tax crimes, and falsification of still more documents. Inexcusably, the DA refused to specify what those unlawful means actually were — and the judge declined to force them to pony up — until right before closing arguments. So much for the constitutional obligation to provide notice to the defendant of the accusations against him in advance of trial. (This, folks, is what indictments are for.)
In these key respects, the charges against Trump aren’t just unusual. They’re bespoke, seemingly crafted individually for the former president and nobody else.”
Not only were the underlying 'crimes' alleged to be covered up by the bookkeeping entries not specified until closing arguments, in New York state court the defense presents closing arguments first, then the prosecution presents closing arguments last, opposite of almost every other state and federal procedure.
So not only was defense not on notice as to what specific crime was alleged, the defense had no opportunity to rebut any of the prosecution's allegations made in closing arguments to the jury.
Those are lies. He wasn't painting with a broad brush as the press painted it as being. He said many of them may be fine people, but we do not know, because we are not vetting those coming in. We do know that Mexico is emptying out their jails and are not sending their best. He denied that it was a legitimate election, and he was correct. It's Michael Shellenberger who is incorrect. He didn't try to change the election results, he tried to expose the falsehood that Biden won legitimately. There's a big difference between the two, and if he can't see that then he's just another person who can't discern truth from lies, something that Biden does on a very regular basis I might add. Besides that, election contesting is something that has happened in many elections, and it's perfectly American to do so. To say it isn't is a BS lie.
He gets a C as far as I am concerned, for allowing his remaining liberal take to interfere with facts. It's okay, but is certain not not great.
He totally ignored that Biden made up a peace negotiation that he lied and said it was coming from Benjamin Netanyahu himself. He is not only lying, it was a naked attempt to sow turmoil in Israel, to favor Iran becoming the dominate force in the Middle East.
Biden did not legally win that election.
For example, Pennsylvania conducted their election outside of the requirements of their state constitution with the mail-in ballots. On one hand, if those are all thrown out, Trump outright wins the state by a large margin. The rub, is that among all of the rubbish there were hundreds of thousands who used the government-provided mail-ins in good faith to make their vote known, while the state made little to no effort to distinguish between those and illegitimate ballots. Legitimate voters were denied the ability to submit their votes in the proper manner based upon prior receipt of mail-in ballots, and provisional ballots were variously handled.
In a fair number of states, no proper effort was made by the state to ensure that those ballots received were knowingly cast by the person who they claimed to be from.
If Biden were the one who had to prove he’d won, it is very unlikely that he could do so in any of several states.
I agree with you assessment but if this would have been handled properly we would have been able to have the opportunity to do what you suggested.
The fact is that ability was shut down. Shut down because the truth and the actual counts would have proven the electoral coup by Biden regime.
Shellenberger just accepts that the election was legit and that the same criminals and fraudsters that were handed the throne in 2020 only now are showing their tyrannical and fraudulent capabilities.
Shellenberger needs to understand that this bunch is carrying out the same type activities they used when stealing an election in 2020.
If he can’t see that he needs to hand over his keyboard. He kind of reminds me of Bill Maher. He knows the whole truth but is unable to ever admit it.
Right.
A court saying “You don’t have standing, and you don’t have standing”, is very much not evidence that there were not valid claims.
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