by Lawrence Kadish
March 26, 2024 at 4:00 am
We have seen former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton allegedly obstruct justice by reportedly ordering her staff to destroy 33,000 subpoenaed emails with BleachBit and smash two of her 13 BlackBerry mobile devices. We have seen President Joe Biden violate a ruling of the Supreme Court that blocked him from using taxpayer funds, some from people who, for whatever reason, did not participate in higher education, to pay off the student loans amounting to $138 billion of other people who did.
We have seen governmental violations of the First Amendment -- from Soviet-style whispers to Facebook to quash the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop by declaring falsely – knowingly so, it turned out – that the material in it supposedly had "all the earmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign," to calling true medical information false during the COVID-19 pandemic. The first maneuver was election interference -- probably decisive in undermining the integrity of the 2020 election. The false medical information disseminated by the government, depriving the ill of alternative medicines -- may have cost countless lives.
Sadly, as of late, we have been witnessing even more governmental abuse of power, astronomically out of control, by individuals elected or appointed to safeguard our laws and our Constitution, but who have been disregarding them at best and upending them at worst, specifically in the treatment of individuals who supposedly walked through "the people's house" on January 6, 2021, and most recently in disfiguring the Eighth Amendment to our Constitution to prosecute not a crime, but a person. The Eighth Amendment, in its entirety, states:
"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."
To the severe detriment of our global reputation, the entire world has just been witnessing staggering violations of those protections, through which District Attorneys and at least one judge have been permitted to skate.
U.S. jurisprudence has been universally respected because it has championed equal application of the law for everyone -- based not on the person but on the law. There was not one set of laws for Al Capone and a different set of laws for, say, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. The greatness of American jurisprudence -- which attracted so many individuals and businesses to America -- was that prosecution was based on a probable crime, then trying to find out who committed it and, through due process, trying to hold that person accountable. Now, however, we have seen NY Attorney General Letitia James actually campaigning for election on a platform of "get Trump" -- for what was never even mentioned.
It is the same process used by Stalin's head of the Soviet secret police (NKVD), Lavrentiy Beria, who reportedly said, "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime." There is an old joke about Stalin supposedly having lost his wristwatch and asking Beria to find out who had stolen it. A few hours later, Stalin called Beria to say that there had been a mistake; he had found the watch, after all. "That's all right," Beria replied, according to the joke, "We have rounded up the suspects, and they have all confessed."
At present, we are seeing laws being contorted so that one person, former President Donald J, Trump, is being prosecuted for a supposed crime in which no estimates were misrepresented without a clause insisting that the other parties to the contract (here, sophisticated banks) verify the estimates for themselves. No one was defrauded. No one ever even complained of being defrauded or wronged. No one lost a dime. One bank even testified that as a client, Trump was a "whale," with whom it would like to do more business. Everyone in this kangaroo-trial of alleged criminal fraud said that they had done colossally well from it.
Yet, a fine of half a billion dollars was imposed, which had to be paid before Trump could even appear before another judge to appeal his case. If the funds could not be raised in one month -- when real estate is famously illiquid -- then James would be able to seize Trump's assets.
Fortunately, on the morning of the forfeiture, the bond was reduced from half a billion dollars to "only" $175 million -- which is also, under these fanciful circumstances, an insane amount to commit simply to be able to be heard by a court.
As Trump says, "They're not after me. They're after you. I'm just standing in the way." He may be right.
Too many people are being deeply wronged. It is to be hoped that in a few months, for the sake of public confidence in free and fair elections, our Republic and our Constitution, that these injustices and others like them, will be set right.
Replies