300 Million in One Week!

As everybody in America must know, former President Trump was convicted of 34 felonies by a New York jury.  The judge overseeing the case will sentence him on July 11, four days before the start of the Republican convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  Will Donald Trump be sent to jail until the election is over?  Will the judge restrict his traveling, and not allow him to campaign out of NY state?  

Nobody really knows for certain, but you can be darn sure about two things.  First, plenty of American citizens are angry at the trial’s outcome – so much so that Trump’s campaign reportedly raised $300 million in donations (much coming from small donors) immediately following his conviction.

The other sure thing you can bet on is that the former President will appeal this decision. We recommend that everyone read the following article: Reversible Errors - The American Mind.  It lists all the sound legal reasons that Trump’s convictions should be reversed and overturned on appeal. In a previous article - A Dark and Stormy Night, we made our own opinion crystal clear – Trump’s prosecution was politically based, and it amounts to election interference in this year’s presidential election. We won’t repeat our reasoning here.  However, we will go back in recent history, to compare back then to what just happened in the NY felony case and other alleged felonies that have been charged, and then make a few observations.

In March 2022, the Federal Election Commission concluded that the 2016 Clinton Presidential campaign and DNC misreported the money that funded the dossier, masking it as “legal services” and “legal and compliance consulting” instead of opposition research for her political campaign. Sound familiar? It should – former President Trump was just convicted of a felony for much the same reason.  In contrast, Hillary, a NY resident, was never charged with a felony.  Instead, the DNC was fined $105,000 and the Clinton campaign was fined a mere $8,000.

In July 2016, FBI Director James Comey said that his office was not recommending prosecutors bring felony charges against former Secretary of State and then Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for her handling of classified information in connection with storing classified information on her private email servers, and the deletion of subpoenaed email records. He stated: “no reasonable prosecutor’ would bring such a case". Sound familiar? It should.  Former President Trump is now facing similar charges. What’s the difference in Trump’s case? Is his prosecutor unreasonable?  We’d say so.

More recently, Special Counsel Robert Hur declined to prosecute President Biden for mishandling classified information.  Despite finding that his investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials and that Biden’s practices “present serious risks to national security,” he didn't charge Biden, in part, because President could portray himself as an "elderly man with a poor memory" who would be sympathetic to a jury. We don’t doubt that Biden would find a sympathetic jury were he prosecuted in the same NY county where Trump was charged, where Biden received 85% of the 2020 vote.  However, we’d bet a lot of money that a jury wouldn’t be so sympathetic if the trial took place in a deep red county, one where Trump won 85% of the vote.

We’ll finish by comparing a few other felony charges (pursued and not pursued) by federal prosecutors against political figures:

• Let’s start with the Contempt of Congress criminal referral to the Justice Department against President Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder in June 2012 "for failing to disclose internal Justice Department documents in response to a subpoena." 

• Lois Lerner, an important IRS official, was criminally referred in 2014 in a case relating to the targeting of Conservatives by the IRS.  In both instances, the Justice Department decided not to seek criminal charges. 

• Consider the case of former Trump advisor, Steve Bannon. Following a criminal referral by the House of Representatives, Federal prosecutors charged him with Contempt of Congress, and he was convicted by a jury in July 2022.  Mr. Bannon lost his appeal, and he will report to jail on July 1 to start his four-month sentence. 
  

• Likewise, following a criminal referral by the House of Representatives, Federal prosecutors charged former Trump trade advisor, Peter Navarro, for contempt of Congress.  Although Mr. Navarro is appealing his conviction, he is currently in jail while serving a four-month sentence.  It is notable and we think troubling that Navarro and Bannon are the first people prosecuted and convicted under this law in roughly forty years.

In conclusion, if you are still wondering why so many American citizens are contributing so much money to the first ex-president ever convicted of a felony, look no further than the pattern in the examples we have cited. In all the cases above, Democrats have been in control of the executive branch in both federal and state governments, and while federal prosecutors have been loath to prosecute Democratic officials, they have been eager to prosecute the former President and his allies.  Unequal Justice under the law?

Federal and state prosecutors are part of the executive branch of government, and they have immense powers.  They can choose when and where they can prosecute defendants, and they have unlimited government funds to threaten defendants, most of whom have limited means.

So, if you are truly worried about a “Threat to Democracy” you should seek to limit prosecutorial powers against political opponents. Let the people decide via the electoral process.