The system of democratic government that our Founding Fathers created is based on the political principal, first espoused more than 2,000 years ago by the Greek philosopher Aristotle, called the “Rule of Law”.
This principle says that all people and organizations within a country, state, or community are held accountable to the same set of laws. In other words, “no one is above the law”.
This is the dream, of course, as other factors often come into play, such as money (for defense attorneys), bias (discrimination against certain groups within the population), and the politics within the jurisdiction (which might be reflected in the determinations of the judge hearing the matter).
Charlie and I watched a crime docudrama last night about a serial rapist who was operating out of Penn State University. He was a 20-year-old football player, a likeable guy among his male peers, but he had a character flaw… he liked to assault helpless women. He was eventually caught and convicted. The judge who presided over the trial was unduly influenced by the politics of Happy Valley and Penn State football and decided to allow the scumbag to remain free on bail before his sentencing hearing. What a considerate judge!
Except that the convicted rapist, out of bail, went home to New Jersey and proceeded to rape four additional women before getting caught. Between the lenient judges in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the well-known Penn State football star was given sentences that allowed him to go free in just 14 years. Upon release, he perpetrated an armed robbery and killed an innocent citizen, whereupon a responsible judge sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Absent politics, this psychopath would have spent decades in prison after his first heinous assault on an innocent woman and five additional citizens wouldn’t have had their lives ruined.
This criminal enjoyed a beneficial bias in the system because he was a Penn State football player. Had he been a Black dude, it is highly likely that his punishment would have been swift and severe… because that is what criminal justice statistics show us.
For many years, American citizens have watched the news reports of Donald Trump’s engagement with the justice system in civil and criminal cases. He’s been tried and convicted of fraud on numerous occasions (Trump University, stiffing contractors, cheating financial institutions, etc.), defamation (of a rape victim), and paying hush money to silence an ex-porn star/girlfriend during the 2016 election.
The former President is currently engaged with numerous state and Federal courts, fighting charges of illegally retaining classified documents, attempting to extort Georgia officials to change the 2020 election results, and igniting the January 2021 attack on the Capitol in Washington D.C.
Trump is, without a doubt, a very dishonest person who simultaneously knows the American justice system like few others… because he has spent so much of his life litigating stuff. And, he is a billionaire personality and ex-President (running for President again), so he gets a certain amount of deference from the courts… which , in Trump fashion, he publicly abuses.
The old saying, that “the wheels of justice grind slowly” is a testament to the impact of lawyers who make delay an art form. Incessant motions, excuses, changes in counsel, requests for continuances, slow-walking requirements to produce documents, and so forth produce a drag on court proceedings. Anyone who has gone through a contested divorce knows that the attorneys for both sides tend to play a lot of these games until both parties are about out of money (to pay attorneys). Only then is a settlement miraculously reached.
Attorneys are not cheap, and good ones cost a pretty penny. In the current criminal justice maelstrom that is Donald Trump’s life, tens of millions of dollars are being paid to hundreds of lawyers to delay, obfuscate, and undermine the numerous cases. Lots of effort, by those attorneys and Trump himself, has been directed toward publicly de-legitimizing the justice system and making the case that the ex-President is the target of a “witch hunt” by politically focused judges and prosecutors trying to impact Trump’s 2024 Presidential campaign.
Famous American poet Carl Sandburg once advised, “If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell.”
This is what’s going on in Trumpworld right now. Not a day goes by that the ex-President isn’t on TV or social media ranting and raving about the persecution that he believes is aimed at him. His protestations of innocence are accompanied by zero evidentiary facts, which is telling, as he has had many years to produce any “smoking guns” that would exonerate himself. The problem is that the conduct that got him into the justice system crosshairs was based on lies, and now he and his attorneys are forced to develop new lies to turn the tide.
Top notch attorneys have shied away from Trump for this reason, as they are considered “officers of the court” who, if they waste the Court’s on frivolous or demonstrably false claims, can be sanctioned by the presiding judge and, possibly, disbarred from their profession. Consequently, Trump’s current batch of attorneys are generally considered second- or third-string players who appear to be out of their league in high profile matters such as these.
A recent strategy of the Trump legal brain trust has been to assert that the now civilian/candidate has some sort of immunity from prosecution because, as President, he could do “whatever he wanted” as part of his job. He would like to believe that, but the U.S. Constitution doesn’t provide kingly powers like that; in fact, our country rebelled against the tyrannical acts of British King George, and the Founding Fathers went to great lengths (separation of powers in Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches) to deter leaders who thought they were “above the law”.
The Supreme Court will ultimately rule on Trump’s assertions regarding Presidential powers. If the Justices were to rule that the Chief Executive had kingly powers, then there would be nothing to prevent a wannabe dictator like Trump from dissolving Congress and the Supreme Court itself. The rule of law would be a thing of the past, as would elections. So, it would be shocking if the Justices would rule in Trump’s favor on this subject.
The goal of the Team Trump legal team is to delay, delay, and delay all the court cases until after the 2024 election, in the hopes that he will be re-elected. If that were to happen, he could direct the Department of Justice to close the Federal cases against him (insurrection and classified docs) and his position as Chief Executive would render any State cases (fraud and defamation in New York and election-related extortion in Georgia) problematic, because… how to you punish a sitting President?
Our legal system has its problems, but it generally works to protect citizens from the bad guys. The alternative to the Rule of Law, i.e. an authoritarian model of government, will be on offer in November.
If voters elect Trump, our Nation will get what it deserves.