Donald Trump: Enemy of the State

tomklingenstein.com ^ | 4 Jun, 2024 | John Eastman

[MtnClimber]

Editor’s Note: The group quota regime advances and guards its power through lawfare—the weaponization of our legal system against political enemies. John Eastman has been relentlessly targeted by the regime’s lawfare campaigns for the supposed crime of advising Donald Trump on the legal issues of the 2020 election. Yet even Eastman’s mistreatment pales in comparison to the regime’s hounding of President Trump himself.

In this analysis, Dr. Eastman brings a lawyer’s perspective to the political prosecutions of the former president, contrasting Trump’s treatment to that of Hillary Clinton, the regime’s favored candidate—whom Trump defeated even despite egregious malfeasance by the Clinton campaign in collusion with the administrative state. The picture that emerges is one of two separate justice systems: one for the friends and tools of the group quota regime, and a far less forgiving one for any critics. The course of our politics and the fate of our nation depend in large part on recognition of that fact.

Donald Trump was a celebrity long before he descended the golden escalator in Trump Tower to announce his bid for the presidency in 2015. It is a common fact of life that hucksters of various stripes will try to cash in on their dealings with a celebrity—either going public with private interactions that would remain private with normal folk, or distorting such private interactions into something they were not in order to get paid off for the mere nuisance value.

Such appears to be the case with Stephanie Clifford, the porn star best known by her stage name of Stormy Daniels. She claims that she and Donald Trump had a one-night sexual encounter at a celebrity golf tournament in Nevada back in 2006, when Trump was host of the television series The Apprentice. Trump denies that the sexual encounter ever occurred. I don’t have any basis to know whether or not it did, but it turns out, in Alvin Bragg’s mind, it doesn’t matter.

Bragg is, of course, the New York district attorney who prosecuted Trump for filing business records claiming that reimbursement to Trump’s lawyer for payments he made to Ms. Clifford to keep the story quiet were “legal expenses.” In Bragg’s version, if Clifford’s story was true, then Cohen’s payment, reimbursed by Trump according, apparently, to the jury’s findings (though that fact, too, was hotly contested by Trump), was designed to prevent a negative story from coming out during the presidential campaign, and therefore to influence the election. Even if it was false, the payment, a nuisance settlement, was designed to prevent negative publicity and therefore influence the election. In either case, it was not a “legal expense,” according to Bragg, but a campaign expense. For Bragg, that turned the normal business records misstatement (if it even was a misstatement; payment to settle a threatened nuisance suit is often treated as a “legal expense”) from a misdemeanor under New York law into a felony because the misdemeanor offense was used to hide another supposed crime.

Here’s where the double standard rears its ugly head. In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s campaign committee and the Democratic National Committee funneled hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of dollars through her law firm to fund the hiring of foreign agents who colluded with officials of the federal government to create a false narrative that Trump was colluding with Russia to have Russia manipulate the U.S. presidential election in his favor. Those funds were falsely reported as “legal services” and “legal and compliance consulting” instead of opposition research, in violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971. Ms. Clinton’s campaign and the DNC were fined more than $100,000 for the illegal reporting, but no one was criminally prosecuted for it.

The double standard breaks down at this point, but not in ways that support Bragg’s prosecution of Trump. Clinton’s false reporting masked what was clearly a campaign expenditure. For reasons I’ll discuss in a moment, Trump’s did not. Worse, that false opposition research, falsely reported, was then used by government officials to obtain FISA warrants to spy on Ms. Clinton’s opponent during the campaign, after Trump was elected, and even after he was inaugurated as President. But for a minor fine and chastisement of one of the officials involved who actually doctored a document that was presented to the FISA court, no one has personally suffered any consequence for this illegal scheme, arguably the greatest political scandal in our nation’s history. Trump’s conduct, even if all true, pales in comparison.

But there is another aspect to this whole controversy that presents a double standard of a different sort. Based on the above, the charges never should have been brought. The statute of limitations for the misdemeanor offense, if it was an offense at all, had long since passed. Tying it to a purported federal offense in order to revive the statute of limitations as well as turn the misdemeanor into a felony involved a “creative” use of the law that prosecutors would normally not entertain – indeed, Bragg’s predecessor specifically declined to bring such a prosecution.

So, too, with the supposed Federal Election Campaign Act violation. Unlike with Clinton’s case, there was no violation here, much less a crime. Indeed, had Trump used campaign funds to pay what is essentially a settlement of a private dispute, that would have been a violation of federal campaign finance law. Campaign funds cannot be used for such purposes, even if the private expense would tangentially benefit, or avoid harm to, the campaign. In my view, this aspect of the case presents the most obvious grounds for reversal of the “guilty” verdict on appeal.

In his rulings on competing pre-trial motions in limine (motions to exclude evidence), Judge Merchan allowed the prosecution to introduce evidence that Trump’s ethically challenged lawyer, Michael Cohen, had pled guilty to a violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act as a result of his payment to Ms. Clifford. But Judge Merchan prohibited Trump’s lawyers from offering expert opinion evidence, from the former Chairman of the Federal Election Commission, that this was not a violation of federal election law. Although expert opinion on legal issues is normally the province of the court, in this case, Judge Merchan reportedly did not instruct the jury as to the elements of any purported federal campaign act violation. The jury was thus left with evidence of a guilty plea admitting to such a violation, and no counterbalancing evidence pointing out the legal infirmity in that plea. Worse, the Judge apparently also instructed the jurors that they need not even agree on which of three possible crimes triggered the election of the misdemeanor offense to a felony.

This is not “Equal Justice Under Law,” the promise so boldly proclaimed in marble atop the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. It is not even “justice” at all. The only questions that now remain are whether the appellate courts in New York or the Supreme Court of the United States will step in to remedy this travesty of justice—and whether they do so before it is too late.

Dr. John Eastman, formerly a constitutional law professor and law school Dean, is a Senior Fellow at The Claremont Institute. He represented President Trump in various challenges to illegality in the 2020 election.

[MtnClimber]

Enemy of the Deep State, that is for sure.

[knarf]

President Trump administered the Presidency with abject strength and dexterity.

We were at peace with ourselves AND the world under his leadership.

[milagro]

Thank you for this post!
It lays out the very clear legal basis Trump has for claiming “disparate treatment under the law” which could-—and SHOULD—get Bragg’s prosecution (and political PERSECUTION) of Trump overturned on appeal.

[Mogger]

Thank God Trump is an "enemy of the state".

If only more "republicans" were.

[Dr.Deth]

We were tougher than young men today

Young men back in the 1940's were not women. You can't say that with any certainty right now.

[motor_racer]

“The State”, enemy of the people.

[Libloather]

...apparently, to the jury’s findings (though that fact, too, was hotly contested by Trump), was designed to prevent a negative story from coming out during the presidential campaign, and therefore to influence the election.

Congress has a slush fund for this particular purpose, no?

[Liz]

An Oct 2022, 640 page report, by @MarcoPolo501c3, scrutinized Hunter’s infamous Laptop:
<><>meticulously documents 459 crimes involving the Biden family and their associates.
<><>shows evidence of Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) violations,
<><>exposes Hunter’s money laundering, and tax fraud
<><>chronicles politically driven Biden federal law enforcement agencies’ tactics,
<><>how the Biden govt protects the Bidens but wages endless lawfare against Trump.