Posted on 11/07/2026 7:32:39 AM PST by MtnClimber
Here in the U.S., with few exceptions, we have a commendable tradition that victorious politicians do not use the criminal justice system to prosecute or otherwise disable their rivals and adversaries. At the presidential level, before Trump the two most prominent examples against that tradition were the prosecution of Aaron Burr by Thomas Jefferson in 1807, and the prosecution of Eugene Debs by Woodrow Wilson in 1918. Otherwise, our defeated presidential candidates have gone peacefully to retirement.
But then, after Trump was defeated in 2020, that tradition was abrogated in rather spectacular fashion. At both the federal and state levels, prosecutors associated with the Democratic Party unleashed an unprecedented multi-barreled lawfare barrage, both criminal and civil, against the defeated adversary: the Justice Department (Jack Smith) prosecution for alleged “obstruction of justice”; the separate Justice Department (also Jack Smith) prosecution for alleged mishandling of classified documents; the New York State (Alvin Bragg) prosecution for for some 35 felonies, all involving alleged mis-recording of blackmail payments as a “legal expense” in books and records of a private company; the separate New York State (Letitia James) civil case seeking to bankrupt Trump with hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties for allegedly over-valuing his properties on personal financial statements.
Notable about all the Trump prosecutions is how completely flimsy were all the charges against him. The idea was rather transparently to use control of levers of government power to disable the main adversary in the political arena. Meanwhile, the people involved sanctimoniously wrapped themselves in a claim that they were “saving our democracy.”
If you don’t keep track of international news, you may not realize the extent to which such efforts to use prosecutions, lawfare and courts to take out political adversaries are common in the world. It’s worse in the third-world countries, but the seemingly sophisticated wealthy countries of Europe are by no means immune. There are many more cases than I can cover here, but I thought a small roundup would be useful to illustrate some other places where such tactics have been used.
France
In the last two presidential elections in France (2017 and 2022), the candidate of the National Rally party, Marine Le Pen, made it into the two-candidate run-off final round, and then finished second to Emanuel Macron. The next presidential election will occur in spring 2027, and this time Le Pen is leading in the polls. Le Pen and her party have as their main issue the imposing of severe restrictions on open immigration. As a result, they are anathema to the Left.
From about 2015 on, Le Pen came under investigation by the French judiciary for alleged embezzlement of European Union funds. The allegation was basically that she took funds allocated by the EU to members of its parliament to pay their staff (Le Pen was a member from 2004-17) and used those funds for politicking in France. The charges were not instigated by the Macron government, but rather apparently by EU bureaucrats and the French judiciary, both notably left-leaning. In March 2025 Le Pen was convicted at trial and sentenced to a four year prison term (mostly suspended), a fine, and a five-year suspension from running for office. This would have taken her out of the 2027 presidential race.
In July 2026 the Paris Court of Appeal affirmed the conviction, but deleted the part of the sentence that disabled Le Pen from running in the upcoming election. So she appears to be re-instated, at least for now.
Romania
In December 2024, Romania’s Constitutional Court annulled the results of the first round of a presidential election, and canceled the second round. The first round had apparently been won by Calin Georgescu, universally characterized in the press as “hard right.” Among his other positions, Georgescu is known as a “nationalist,” and as a critic of Ukraine and of NATO. In March 2025 a Romanian Electoral Commission disqualified Georgescu from participating in the re-scheduled election. In May 2025 a new election was held, and the winner was Nicusor Dan, characterized as a “centrist,” over an opponent, Simion, who was allied with Georgescu.
What were the grounds for annulling the first election? Here is a Report from something called the International Foundation for Electoral Systems. Key quote:
Romanian intelligence services declassified documents outlining concerns about cyber activities by state and non-state actors, the use of digital technologies, and information campaigns that may have undermined the election's integrity. These documents underscored the dual nature of new technologies in elections and their manipulation by malign actors. . . .
The main alleged “malign actor” involved was Russia. The court did not hold any trial, and issued its decision annulling the election within a few days after the intelligence services released their declassified documents. In other words, it appears that the court basically took the word of the intelligence services as to alleged “election interference.” Any resemblance to the “Russia collusion” hoax perpetrated by the U.S. intelligence services may be completely coincidental. Anyway, in the second election held in May 2025, the judiciary got their preferred pro-EU “centrist,” and suddenly there was no annulment of the result.
Brazil
On October 25, “Lula” da Silva was declared the apparent winner of Brazil’s latest presidential election. The next day, October 26, Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, ordered confiscation of the passport of the losing candidate, Flavio Bolsonaro, in anticipation of prosecution for crimes as yet unspecified. Bolsonaro promptly fled the country before he could be arrested. Meanwhile, Bolsonaro’s father Jair, the losing candidate in the previous election four years ago, is under “house arrest” in Brazil on a 27-year sentence. A statute passed by the Brazilian Congress earlier that would have greatly shortened the sentence has been “suspended” by the Supreme Court pending full constitutional review.
The Wall Street Journal had an editorial on October 28 about the situation. Key quote:
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, a Lula ally, signed off on a federal police request to seize Mr. Bolsonaro’s travel documents. . . . Mr. Bolsonaro hasn’t been charged with a crime. But he has good reason to believe that he can’t get a fair trial if he is. Lula said at a campaign debate that as soon as Mr. Bolsonaro no longer had congressional immunity, he’d face all manner of investigations. Lula chose the man and promised to find the crime. The job of deciding whether a criminal prosecution of a federal politician is warranted belongs to the attorney general. But Justice de Moraes has made a practice of expanding his jurisdiction when it suits his political aims.
Here is a picture of de Moraes:
And these examples are without getting to some of the really authoritarian countries like Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, where political adversaries of the regime just disappear into a prison somewhere, never to be heard from again.
Meanwhile, there have been several recent electoral victories in South America by the political right. At least a few of those have not been followed by notable instances of prosecution of the defeated adversaries. Two examples of that are Colombia and Chile.
But not all the recent right-wing victors are clean on this score. Instances of arrests of high-ranking political adversaries by new right-wing leaders have occurred in both Bolivia and Ecuador. At least in Bolivia, the charges appear serious and legitimate (e.g., former president Luis Arce is charged with embezzlement of $700 million from the government-funded Peasant Development Fund). However, based only on a few translated articles, and without knowing the applicable laws, I am not able to do an independent evaluation of the seriousness of these cases.
It is next to impossible to operate a democracy where the consequence of defeat is prosecution and imprisonment at the hands of the victor. In the U.S., we have had two centuries with almost none of that. Now that seems to be slipping away. Once it’s gone, I don’t know how we get it back. We could end up no better than all these third-rate countries.
Manhattan Contrarian ping
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJTKfXJ_0Xs
4 minute video entitled “Elon Musk is f*cked..” by Asmongold Clips / Asmongold Reacts To: Democrats warning Elon Musk on what’s coming next (including EXECUTION!)
Leftists are eaten up with power lust and envy. They stand for nothing else.
Whatever is being “saved” by these machinations, it is not “democracy” in any way, shape, form or manner. It is, in actual practice, a very virulent form of mob rule and anarchy.
Neither of these circumstances bode well for peace and tranquility. Some people cannot stand prosperity, and if they do not have enough adversity in their lives, they have to go out of their way to invent some.
A glimmering “Golden Age” remains forever a mirage, in their estimation. Better the peons be boxed in with their misery and privation, than to allow the least ray of hope or optimism.
After all: "Exit polling data show 89% stated that the cost of living was a 'crucial or major' factor in their candidate selection."
Instead, Democrats have no plan - or intention - to lower prices, their Prime Directive is focused on persecuting, prosecuting and jailing their opponents:
Here in the U.S., with few exceptions, we have a commendable tradition that victorious politicians do not use the criminal justice system to prosecute or otherwise disable their rivals and adversaries.
“...we have a commendable tradition that victorious politicians do not use the criminal justice system to prosecute or otherwise disable their rivals and adversaries...”
Where have you been? The first major instance of the federal justice system being used to target political rivals occurred with the passage of the Sedition Act of 1798 under President John Adam. And it has increased since.
Some are:
Reconstruction and Post-Civil War: Legal codes, vagrancy laws, and convict leasing systems were utilized in the American South to enforce racial hierarchies and suppress political power among Black Americans and their allies.
Mid-20th Century: Investigations and loyalty oaths during the Red Scare and McCarthy era targeted political dissidents, labor organizers, and alleged subversives.
Andrew Johnson was the first president to be formally impeached by Congress, facing political and legal allegations in 1868 stemming from his violation of the Tenure of Office Act. Like Clinton, he was acquitted by the Senate.
Ulysses S. Grant: He is the only sitting president to have ever been physically arrested. In 1872, a Washington, D.C. police officer arrested Grant for speeding through the city streets in his horse-drawn carriage. He was taken to the police station and released after paying a fine.
Richard Nixon: During the Watergate scandal in 1974, a federal grand jury named Nixon as an “unindicted co-conspirator”. Facing imminent impeachment and potential criminal prosecution, he resigned from office. He was later granted a full preemptive pardon by his successor, Gerald Ford.
Bill Clinton: Clinton faced multiple legal challenges during his presidency, including a civil sexual harassment lawsuit by Paula Jones. His testimony in that case led to an independent counsel investigation, and he was subsequently impeached by the House in 1998 on federal charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. He was acquitted by the Senate. On his final day in office, he reached a deal with prosecutors to suspend his law license and pay a fine to avoid post-presidency criminal charges.
While he was governor of Arkansas, he signed off on documents that cleared a private company named Health Management Associates (HMA) who paid Arkansas prisoners—a demographic at high risk for blood-borne illnesses—$7 per pint for their plasma and sold it internationally for roughly $50 per pint to Continental Pharma Cryosan Ltd., a Montreal-based blood broker. From that use over 30k people got hepatitus and thouands of others aids. The invstigation of the brokering by Clinton by the justice system as the deaths of Vince Foster, who supposedly committed suicde, he brokered the deal for the Clintons, and Gary Parks, Foster’s partner, when he was murdeed in Arkansas shortly after and the state entering his home and stripping his computers. This inceident was a real problem for the liberal party and caused as lot of displayed problems.
There’s more. But this investigations and arrests aren’t a new activity. Been around almost right about the time of the existance of the first 13 states. In 1798 all thirteen states ratified the U.S. Constitution to form the new federal union. In the same year this activity started.
wy69
“...we have a commendable tradition that victorious politicians do not use the criminal justice system to prosecute or otherwise disable their rivals and adversaries...”
Where have you been? The first major instance of the federal justice system being used to target political rivals occurred with the passage of the Sedition Act of 1798 under President John Adam. And it has increased since.
Some are:
Reconstruction and Post-Civil War: Legal codes, vagrancy laws, and convict leasing systems were utilized in the American South to enforce racial hierarchies and suppress political power among Black Americans and their allies.
Mid-20th Century: Investigations and loyalty oaths during the Red Scare and McCarthy era targeted political dissidents, labor organizers, and alleged subversives.
Andrew Johnson was the first president to be formally impeached by Congress, facing political and legal allegations in 1868 stemming from his violation of the Tenure of Office Act. Like Clinton, he was acquitted by the Senate.
Ulysses S. Grant: He is the only sitting president to have ever been physically arrested. In 1872, a Washington, D.C. police officer arrested Grant for speeding through the city streets in his horse-drawn carriage. He was taken to the police station and released after paying a fine.
Richard Nixon: During the Watergate scandal in 1974, a federal grand jury named Nixon as an “unindicted co-conspirator”. Facing imminent impeachment and potential criminal prosecution, he resigned from office. He was later granted a full preemptive pardon by his successor, Gerald Ford.
Bill Clinton: Clinton faced multiple legal challenges during his presidency, including a civil sexual harassment lawsuit by Paula Jones. His testimony in that case led to an independent counsel investigation, and he was subsequently impeached by the House in 1998 on federal charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. He was acquitted by the Senate. On his final day in office, he reached a deal with prosecutors to suspend his law license and pay a fine to avoid post-presidency criminal charges.
While he was governor of Arkansas, he signed off on documents that cleared a private company named Health Management Associates (HMA) who paid Arkansas prisoners—a demographic at high risk for blood-borne illnesses—$7 per pint for their plasma and sold it internationally for roughly $50 per pint to Continental Pharma Cryosan Ltd., a Montreal-based blood broker. From that use over 30k people got hepatitus and thouands of others aids. The invstigation of the brokering by Clinton by the justice system as the deaths of Vince Foster, who supposedly committed suicde, he brokered the deal for the Clintons, and Gary Parks, Foster’s partner, when he was murdeed in Arkansas shortly after and the state entering his home and stripping his computers. This inceident was a real problem for the liberal party and caused as lot of displayed problems.
There’s more. But this investigations and arrests aren’t a new activity. Been around almost right about the time of the existance of the first 13 states. In 1798 all thirteen states ratified the U.S. Constitution to form the new federal union. In the same year this activity started.
wy69
I suppose the word “lawfare” is no longer part of the demonicRAT vocabulary.
Forgot about the Dems and how they harassed the family and friends of Ollie North and Poindexter…
And of course, Nixon.
In both cases the communist wing of the Dems was leading the way.
The Red Scare was misnamed … it was an actual infestation.
I don’t think Grant’s ticket looks political.
Is the author intentionally ignorant? Or unintentionally ignorant?
The only difference is that Obama, Trump Biden centralized the politicalization when previously each US District Attorney worked on behalf of the Senator that sponsored him with little central direction or control from Washington.
The best example is IL where Republican Sen Peter Fitzgerald (and John McCain) succeeded in having an anti-corruption District Attorney appointed. That has resulted in many hundreds of corrupt politicians being convicted. They were just as corrupt when corrupt Sen Dirksen (R) and corrupt Sen Dixon (D) and corrupt House Minority leader Michels (R) and House Speaker Hastert (R) were in power. But their appointments were intentionally made to protect the corrupt.
Corruption in the SWAMP is often bi-partisan. The DOJ, VANCE, RFK, OZ have not (yet) gone after that FRAUD WASTE ABUSE in the swamp, in the bureaucracy, in the IT vendors and other government vendors.
It will be interesting to see what, if any, fight against FRAUD WASTE ABUSE occurs in 2027-28. I, for one, hope RFK/OZ clean house, especially with the IT Vendors. Will Vance see it as his Christian mission to clean the swamp?
Bkmk
When the Marxist gain power democracy is the first to be executed.
I think that posting exactly represents the problem we will be facing.
The few exceptions might be listed as “most of the Democrats”.
What?
Debs was the founder of the USA Socialist Party and a former Democrat.
President Wilson was a Hard Left political activist in the Democratic Party and the White House.
Debs was charged with Contempt of Court for his role in a months long and violent rail road strike while Wilson was President.
The following was put together / thought up; by Chanel Rion, of OAN. {One America News Network}
Chanel is the Chief White House correspondent and Political Correspondent at One America News.
My only claim to fame is; I typed her words, nothing more. Hence the following is by Stanwooddave.
A very legally simplistic way to end the DemocRATS Hearings before they even start, is for every, any and all Deponent(s) at every hearing; will be responding identically to every question that the DemocRATS throw at them in their now infamous vaunted Lawyer-Up Hearings. The hearings are over, before they even start. An endless debacle of same answer as above. Yet another DemocRAT Clown Show. The best defense is a much stronger offense. And Nothing offends a DemocRAT more than when you mock their self invented powers.
If MAGA were to adopt a Policy Wide; the following: On advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to respond on the grounds that my testimony is likely to become manipulated or might tend to somehow incriminate me during this, a contrived Political Drama, I invoke my fifth amendment right to decline and answer and remain silent as an innocent - Presumed innocent by law—of any wrongdoing.
And to every question in series after that reply. Don’t say it all over again. Just Say: I restate and invoke my first response verbatim.
Dr. Fauci took the Fifth Amendment 111, (one-hundred-eleven,) times. Nothing happened to him. Good advice of counsel. The dingbat Regina Wallace-Jones, the CEO of ACTBLUE, pleaded the fifth amendment 22 times.
BKMRK.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.