Politicizing the law
Last week, the main stream media and the never-Trump faction of the political spectrum were in near-euphoric spasms in that Paul Manafort, a short-term campaign chairman for President Donald J. Trump, and his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, were respectively found guilty or pled guilty in separate court proceedings.
Manafort, who came under investigation by the team under the direction of former FBI head Robert Mueller, was found guilty on eight counts of tax fraud and evasion and other counts, while the jury could not agree on 10 other counts. Cohen, meanwhile, pled guilty to similar charges of tax evasion and paying off porn star Stormy Daniels at the behest of Trump. This last count isn’t even a violation of existing law according to experts, but this is the world in which we are living.
In both cases, our sense of fairness and the idea of equal justice is under assault by the Mueller investigation and those charges he referred to the Southern District of New York. Does anyone really believe Manafort or Cohen would have come under scrutiny – let alone charges – if they weren’t allied with Trump? We don’t.
In Manafort’s case, the FBI and Dept. of Justice passed on charging him in 2005 and 2014. When charges were preferred by Mueller’s team, even the judge in the case realized what was going on. The cases were resurrected to make Manafort “sing or compose,” a term meaning he would either turn state’s evidence, or lie to stay out of jail. Unfortunately, federal prosecutors, we are learning, are not above lying or withholding evidence to get their convictions.
In Cohen’s case, his association as Trump’s personal attorney was the catalyst for the probe into his affairs, and there is still a legal question as to tapes and emails confiscated by law-enforcement officials come under the attorney-client privilege.
The point is that in both situations it was the establishment as exhibited by Mueller and the elites that run the DOJ and FBI that used the law to put the squeeze on a sitting president they hate. This isn’t “equal justice under the law,” this is an attempted coup.
It has become apparent that Mueller is working to unseat this president by means of getting something to give a hoped-for Democratic House of Representatives (come the fall election) a chance at impeachment. Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016, and he is there to upset the apple cart that is establishment Washington.
Mueller’s investigation has all but given up on Trump-Russia collusion, and decided to find a way to undo the 2016 election. The outsider is being pushed by official Washington, which does not want its misdeeds brought out into the light.
What has become very apparent is that one does not need to wear a tin foil hat to understand that Washington’s bureaucracy has become a government unto itself. Indeed, it is filled with professionals who have come to see themselves as the true deciders of policy.
One need only remember a decade or so ago, when articles and books were written about how the State Dept. bureaucracy has become so entrenched it, not elected officials, seeks to determine foreign policy. Trump’s decision to follow another path on that policy has that bureaucracy determined to thwart him.
The same is true for the FBI and DOJ, it has become apparent through emails and official documents, entrenched bureaucracies determined what was best for the nation, and that meant the election of Hillary Clinton. The agencies did all they could do to tilt an election – and failed. They’d hoped their loyalty would be justly rewarded.
When the electorate had other plans and elected Trump, the DOJ and FBI’s bureaucracies had to cover up their misdeeds and delegitimize the election. We are seeing that unfold before our eyes.
As we have said Progressivism sought a government of experts as a benign guide for the citizenry. What Progressivism didn’t take into account is the raw desire to acquire power. Now we have an alphabet soup of agencies and departments that believe they are accountable to no one.
Our sense of fairness and justice should be shaken by the events of the last weeks. Manafort and Cohen might have done things wrong, even criminal, but they were not prosecuted until it became a political expedient for administration foes.