The New York state fraud case against Donald Trump is absurd; and the White House now openly tells its operatives to defy Congressional subpoenas. Democrats seem blind to the risks they're running.
Even dictatorships have judges.
Which doesn’t mean they have justice.
Democrats appear ever-more enamored with “lawfare” — a term that hardly existed before Donald Trump was elected president in 2016 — as they try to keep Trump from returning to the White House.
Left-wing politicians, prosecutors, and lawyers may be sincere when they say they believe Trump is an existential threat to democracy who must be stopped by any means necessary.
But they would be wise not to become what they fear.
The Democratic effort to twist the legal system has accelerated in the last few months.
Trump and his most ardent supporters now face an unrelenting flow of civil and criminal cases, some of which at best stretch legal theories to their limits. But judges in blue cities and states have been notably reluctant to push back on them.
Meanwhile, as I wrote yesterday, the Biden White House has now openly encouraged its operatives to defy Congressional subpoenas by promising them carte blanche to do so - even as the Justice Department tries to jail Trump’s advisors for similar moves.
The issue stretches far beyond the four flagship criminal cases and 91 charges that Trump faces. In those, at least, he has the protections that criminal law gives defendants, and the financial resources to use them.
The Associated Press estimated that Trump has spent $77 million in the last two years defending himself. Even bigger expenses lie ahead as his criminal trials approach.
Some of Trump’s biggest supporters are not so lucky. In Washington, D.C., prosecutions over the Jan. 6 protests and riot are increasingly unhinged. Even the New York Times admitted last month they have now caught many people who “did little more than walk into — and then out of — the Capitol.”
In Colorado, the former general counsel of the Democratic Party has led an effort to use language meant for Confederate secessionists to keep Trump off the 2024 ballot.
And in New York, the reality that Trump cannot count on anything like impartial hearings from neutral judges has been clear for months. Not coincidentally, the actions that have damaged Trump the most were both brought in Manhattan, where Trump is widely hated and Joe Biden won 87 percent of the vote in 2020.
Most stunningly, Trump faces up to $370 million in fines and the loss of his businesses for a civil “fraud” case brought by the state of New York in which he took out loans - then fully repaid them.
Even the Associated Press questioned the ruling, writing that Trump’s companies were:
the only big business found that was threatened with a shutdown [under the New York law used against Trump] without a showing of obvious victims and major losses.
Some legal experts worry if the New York judge goes ahead with such a penalty in a final ruling expected within the next couple of weeks, it could make it easier for courts to wipe out companies in the future.
Then there are the two “defamation” lawsuits from E. Jean Carroll, a woman who was completely unknown until she accused Trump in print of raping her. (Carroll’s suits might more accurately be called “famation” cases.)
Manhattan juries have already decided against Trump in those suits and awarded Carroll almost $90 million. Trump certainly used nasty language to defend himself against Carroll’s claims, but it is unclear how exactly he could have denied them without incurring a jury’s wrath.
* * *
Back in Washington, the Biden Administration is now extending its (literal) contempt of the law to Congress, as I wrote yesterday:
URGENT: Ex-White House advisor Andy Slavitt is refusing to comply with a subpoena over questions about how he tried to censor me and others in 2021
ALEX BERENSON· FEB 4
That the White House has told two of its former operatives - Andy Slavitt and Rob Flaherty, the deputy campaign manager of Biden’s 2024 presidential campaign - to ignore a lawful Congressional subpoena is ugly enough.
But the fact that it has done so while prosecuting two of Trump’s advisors for refusing similar testimony is far worse.
Of course, none of this has stopped me and James Lawrence from suing the White House for its censorship efforts in Berenson v Biden.
I remain a believer in the court system - and very optimistic that federal Judge Jessica G.L. Clarke will see the merits of our case. After all, Judge William Alsup - a Clinton appointee - took our arguments in Berenson v Twitter seriously and rejected Twitter’s motion to dismiss the suit.
But the overall picture is ugly.
Sure, Democrats are winning tactical victories and costing Trump money. But they’re not considering how these efforts to use the courts look, not just to Trump partisans but anyone who thinks elections should be decided by voters, not judges or juries.
And Trump’s criminal prosecutions haven’t even gotten to trial yet.
* * *
