Government legal forces at the national, state, and local levels have mounted challenges to the actions of Donald Trump and his associates. These actions occur within a context of other government actions against Donald Trump. Obama’s Internal Revenue Service infamously targeted conservative organizations, and his administration spied on the Trump campaign under knowingly false pretenses. There is good reason for the political Right to have concerns about such weaponizing of federal agencies by Democrats against their political opponents.
I will begin with the Durham report and move to the specific legal actions taken against Trump.
The Durham report did not yield significant revelations or convictions. If we stop there, the report makes little contribution to what I am considering. However, the report does suggest a trajectory of thought that ought to be concerning.
According to the Durham Report, the plan by Hillary Clinton to create a false story linking Donald Trump to Russia was briefed in August of 2016 by CIA Director John Brennan to President Obama, VP Biden, AG Loretta Lynch, and FBI Director Comey. Lisa Page testified before Congress that Crossfire Hurricane analysts were "super experts on Russia" when in fact they were "uniformly inexperienced" and "[n]one of them were subject matter expert analysts." The FBI investigation into the Trump campaign is unprecedented in our history, and the probe even happening is extraordinarily dangerous.
In his 306-page report, John Durham, the former top prosecutor in Connecticut, repeated prior criticisms faulting the Federal Bureau of Investigation on several points.
He said the bureau swiftly pursued a vague tip about potential contacts between a Trump campaign aide and Russia authorities in July 2016, even though, the report says, the bureau had no other information in its files to corroborate any such contact. The Justice Department’s inspector general in 2019 found similar flaws in the FBI inquiry but found the investigation was justified. He concluded the FBI was more cautious and skeptical of allegations of foreign influence on the Clinton campaign than on the Trump campaign in 2016. According to the report, the bureau did not aggressively pursue evidence of two instances in which foreign governments were potentially planning to contribute to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign to gain influence. The speed with which the FBI opened the investigation into the Trump campaign “based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence also reflected a noticeable departure from how it approached” those other allegations, it said. The FBI inquiry lacked "analytical rigor." The FBI provided briefings to the Clinton campaign, the report said, an approach it said stood in contrast to the lack of such briefings provided to the Trump campaign.
Of concern is that the investigation by the FBI was “in part triggered and sustained” by political opposition to Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. The FBI did not rigorously analyze information it received, especially from people and groups with political affiliation, prolonging the investigation and prompting the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller. Mr. Durham said the FBI was overly reliant on investigative leads from Mr. Trump’s political opponents. There was significant reliance on investigative leads provided or funded (directly or indirectly) by Trump’s political opponents. The [Justice] Department did not adequately examine or question these materials and the motivations of those providing them, even when at about the same time the Director of the FBI and others learned of significant and potentially contrary intelligence. Another way of understanding this is that the FBI became the legal arm of Hilary Clinton and the Democrat Party because the leaders of the FBI wanted a Clinton presidency.
The Durham investigation indicates a coordinated effort by the Clinton campaign to disseminate false allegations against Donald Trump to win the 2016 election. Indictments filed by Durham show that the “Steele Dossier” and “Alfa-Bank” allegations of a conspiracy between Trump and the Kremlin were entirely concocted. The actions alleged in these indictments should be condemned so that they are never repeated by any political campaign in the future. The report did not find that the Trump campaign and Russia had conspired together to influence the election. The FBI had not possessed evidence of collusion between Donald Trump's campaign and Russia before launching an inquiry. "The Department [of Justice] and the FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law," the report concluded. There was a continuing need for the FBI and the [Justice] Department to recognize that lack of analytical rigor, apparent confirmation bias, and an over-willingness to rely on information from individuals connected to political opponents caused investigators to fail to adequately consider alternative hypotheses and to act without appropriate objectivity or restraint in pursuing allegations of collusion or conspiracy between a U.S. political campaign and a foreign power.
Democrat Party leaders Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell said they had indisputable proof that Trump was a Russian agent. Clearly, not only did they not have such proof, but they were part of the cabal of good people in the Democrat Party, the FBI, the CIA, and in the media, who, because of their view of Trump, did dreadful things.
“The Durham Report details serious and unforgivable breaches by federal law enforcement. Relying on altered documents and partisan opposition research is an extreme abuse of power. There is no justification for using national security tools designed to keep America safe for partisan political gain. Those responsible need to be held accountable, not just for meddling in the presidential election but also for the damage done to our institutions. America and its institutions are weaker today because of their actions, and it will take years for the FBI and others to rebuild that trust. Rigorous oversight of the FBI’s intelligence activities must be a top priority for the congressional intelligence committees.” – Senator Rubio
It may well be true that good people were motivated by a biased mindset about Trump. They may have honestly believed that there was a higher duty than truth or principle in getting Trump and preventing him from winning as president. However, that just distorts our Constitution, our rule of law, and our civil liberties. They used the apparatus of the Intelligence Community and the national security community, to distort reality and try to get him. That is what happens when good people do dreadful things.
The Durham report should be understood as a dire warning about the fate of our country. John Adams issued a similar warning when he penned his famous line, that “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” George Washington did the same in his farewell address when he said, “’Tis substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.”
The founders knew what we seem to have forgotten: Without a virtuous people, without citizens and leaders who believe in objective moral truth and understand themselves to be bound by it, we cannot be a free people, and we cannot sustain a republic. Laws alone, to say nothing of guidelines and policies, are not enough to support and sustain self-government. You need citizens who will respect and uphold the law, and leaders who believe in the principle of self-government. The behavior of Pres. Obama, vice-Pres. Biden, Hillary Clinton, and the heads of the FBI and CIA, when it came to the election of Donald Trump, did not express their belief in that principle.
I would like to see the persons named in the Durham report pay for what they did, even if I am willing to grant that they are good people who did dreadful things. However, that will not happen, in part because of the difficulty of getting a jury that will suspend their political beliefs and look only at the evidence, and in part because evidence of criminal wrongdoing must meet a high standard, as it should. Thus, all people like me will ever have is the satisfaction of knowing that people in power abused their power to take down an elected president of the United States.
All this is context for the ongoing prosecution of Donald Trump and his associates. I get that the supporters of Trump will be suspicious of the charges, especially considering that their source are legal forces sympathetic to the Democrat Party. I grew in the 1960s and remain suspicious of government officials after the many lies regarding the Vietnam War. The pattern is the willingness by the political Left to weaponize local, state, and federal powers against a political opponent. For all fair-minded people, this ought to be of concern.
Attack No. 1 is the federal indictment, brought by the Justice Department-appointed special counsel Jack Smith, charging Trump with 40 felony counts in the classified documents case.
The allegations against Trump in the federal indictment are damning, if proved true. The indictment alleges not just that Trump took home classified documents—something done by public figures ranging from Biden to Mike Pence to Clinton—but that he proceeded to tell his lawyers to attest that he had turned those documents back in, all the while shifting the documents themselves around to avoid his own lawyers knowing about them; that he bragged to journalists about classified documents in his possession while acknowledging that he had not in fact declassified them; and that those documents did contain highly important national security information.
It was always going to be hard to do this year, given that it involves millions of documents, security clearances, and special handling of evidence. The judge in the case has entertained suggestions of starting the trial in midsummer, but that seems extremely unlikely, and a verdict before Election Day seems even more unlikely.
No. 2 is the federal indictment, also brought by Smith, charging Trump with four felonies in the 2020 election and Jan. 6 case.
This is the showpiece case, the one so many anti-Trump forces have pinned their hopes on because they see it as the prime vehicle to hold Trump “accountable,” one of their favorite words, for his efforts to challenge the 2020 election results. The trial was originally scheduled to begin but has been delayed by Trump’s claim that he should be immune from charges over acts he took as president. Prosecutor Jack Smith is scrambling to keep the case on track, but the Supreme Court will rule not only on the immunity question, which Trump is expected to lose, but also on two of the four charges against Trump, which some argue simply do not apply to the case. Plus, the whole thing flatly violates Justice Department guidelines that bar a prosecutor from “select[ing] the timing of any action … for the purpose of affecting any election,” which Smith is clearly trying to do. Look for Smith to keep encountering problems.
No. 3 is the sprawling, 13-felony count racketeering indictment, based on the 2020 election, brought against Trump and 18 co-defendants in Georgia by the elected Democratic Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Right now, everyone is waiting for a judge to decide whether to remove Willis from the case based on charges of misconduct raised by several defense lawyers. If Willis is removed, the entire case might collapse for want of another prosecutor to pursue it. In any event, it has been hopelessly delayed, and even before the recent mess, Willis predicted it would take until early 2025 to decide. To call the case troubled would be a great understatement.
Trump lawyers are pleading guilty to specific charges, two to misdemeanors and one to a felony is serious.
All defendants in the Georgia case were charged with violating the state's Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. One legal question raised is whether these are crimes of moral turpitude, which is an act of depravity in the private and social duties that one owes to others or society in general, contrary to the accepted and customary rule of right and duty toward others. If accepted as such a crime, it would lead to the fingerprinting of the individual.
Bail bondsman Scott Hall pled guilty on September 29 to five misdemeanor charges of "conspiracy to commit intentional interference with the performance of election duties" in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, giving up his right to a trial by jury to appeal a conviction. Mr. Hall has agreed to five years of probation, 12 months for each count, and to "testify truthfully in this case and all further proceedings," something the prosecutors emphasized and repeated. He will also need to pay a $5,000 fine, write a letter of apology to the citizens of Georgia, and complete 200 hours of community service. He will also need to surrender his firearms license and cannot participate in polling or the administering of elections in this period. By entering this plea, Mr. Hall has become a key witness in the case against the remaining 18 defendants. The prosecution will assert that the misdemeanors to which my client is pleading are not crimes of moral turpitude,"
Sidney Powell accepted a plea bargain in Fulton County on the morning of Oct. 19, pleading guilty to six misdemeanors related to election interference in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. She pleaded guilty to six counts of "conspiracy to commit intentional interference with election duties." "This conspiracy included the following objectives:
"One: to unlawfully tamper with the electronic ballot markers and tabulating machines.
"Two: to cause certain members of the conspiracy, who were not officers charged by law with the care of ballots, and who were not persons entrusted by any such officer with the care of ballots for a purpose required by law, to possess official ballots outside the polling place.
"Three: to use a computer with knowledge that such use was without authority, and with the intention of taking and appropriating information, data, and software, the property of Dominion Voting Systems Corporation.
"Four: to use a computer with knowledge that such use was without authority and with the intention of removing voting data and Dominion Voting Systems Corporation data from said computer.
"Five: to use a computer with the intention of examining personal voter data with knowledge such examination was without authority. Each of these constitutes an attempt to interfere with, hinder, and delay Misty Hampton in her election duties.
Ms. Powell had previously argued that she was not the one who contracted the investigation company. These are not crimes of moral turpitude.
Jenna Ellis was a lawyer for Donald Trump. She pled guilty to a felony, aiding, and abetting false statements and writings. She admitted that claims she made about the 2020 presidential election and Georgia were false, including allegations that 2,506 felons and 10,315 dead people voted in the election. The documents also said the allegation that workers at State Farm Arena ordered poll watchers and reporters to leave the tabulation area the night of the election and continued to operate after everyone left was false.
No. 4 is the 34-felony count indictment, based on the payment of hush money in the 2016 election, brought by the elected Democratic Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Bragg was the first to file criminal charges against Trump. It is safe to say he got little respect for it. Even Trump’s adversaries admitted that the Bragg charges were weak. It is really a bunch of misdemeanors that Bragg conjured into felonies through a legally questionable maneuver. The other cases, bad as some of them are, got more respect and attention, and Bragg stepped into the background, offering to delay trying his case while the others went first. But now all those cases have encountered problems, and Bragg is steaming ahead to a March 25 trial date, less than three weeks away. It is a bad case, but it is a case. If you are trying to bring down Trump by any means necessary and all the other cases have faltered, well, go with Bragg. As weak as the case is, he still seems favored to win at least some convictions with a New York jury.
No. 5 is the effort, launched by various activists around the country, to remove Trump from presidential ballots by declaring him an “insurrectionist” under the terms of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
This legal effort is over. The Supreme Court unanimously decided that the court in Colorado got it wrong in denying to Trump a place on its ballot for President. “We conclude that States may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office. But States have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency.” This should be a stern warning for state and local officials not to interfere with the electoral process for President. Three of the four prosecutors have either in advance promised to get Trump or have proved grossly unethical. Most know it is wrong to try to remove a leading presidential candidate from state ballots. Yet many shrug that this new weaponization of America’s legal system. Such use of political power ought to be of concern to Americans across the political spectrum and to be of concern to those who are “never Trump,” whether of the Left or Right.
However, the reaction to this unanimous decision among prominent persons among political Left is instructive. To mention one, Keith Olbermann said the Supreme Court has betrayed democracy, proved itself inept at reading comprehension, shown itself to be corrupt, shown itself to be illegitimate. It must be dissolved. This position continues to be popular among progressives on the political Left. It is a symbol of the concern the political Right has for the failure of progressives to respect the constitution and the institutions of liberal democracy.
And No. 6 is the effort to bankrupt Trump by way of a lawsuit brought by the elected Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James.
A good example is the conviction of Trump business by New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, who issued a ruling on Feb. 16, 2024, ordering former President Donald Trump and Trump Organization executives to pay $355 million in damages, and barring the former president from doing business in the state for three years. The ruling also vacated a previous order to cancel Trump Organization business certificates, which had been widely criticized as a “corporate death blow.”
For supporters of Trump, a Democrat Attorney General and a Democrat judge ignored that there were zero victims and the banks the Trump Organization defrauded testified on behalf of the Trump organization. Thus, consistent with Clinton, Obama, and Biden at the national level, the state Democrat Party appears to want to do what it can destroy Trump wealth.
Thus, unlike the others, this has been a ringing success for the people seeking Trump’s financial ruin. Trying flimsy and blatantly unfair charges before a compliant judge — under New York law, Trump did not have the right to a jury trial — James won a $454 million judgment against the former president. Trump is now scrambling to find a way to reduce the amount he must pay this month, an effort that might involve him partially dismantling his business empire to pay James while he seeks an appeal. Even if he manages to reduce the award on appeal, Trump has still been damaged. And James, the attorney general, is having fun taunting him on social media, reminding him that the amount he owes is going up by more than $100,000 each day due to interest.
All this relates to the matter of criminality and threats to American democracy. To be clear, I doubt Trump did anything criminal, although legally he is, regardless of how tainted the decision in New York may be. He is boorish, arrogant, and foolish.
I have seen evidence to convince me that President Obama, Biden, Hillary, and the heads of the FBI and CIA, engaged in questionable behavior in advancing a Russian narrative they knew to be a lie with the purpose of removing from the presidency a duly elected president. None of this may be criminal, but, and this is important, it represents a threat to democracy and the peaceful transition of political power. To invent and fabricate sensational allegations, present them to the FBI as fact, and serve them to a willing media in the weeks before Election Day, are serious efforts to subvert the electoral process.
My personal concern is for the future. Nicky Haley presented a viable conservative alternative. She had the potential of winning over many independents and disaffected Democrats. We will never know what that election might have looked like.
Another Biden-Trump election, two old white guys, will be boring. In the case of Biden, I am reminded of a hysterical movie, Weekend at Bernies, in which the humor surrounds keeping a dead man appearing as if he is alive for at least a few days. My problem with the drama that Trump brings with him wherever he goes I have already made clear. At least I have options of a libertarian candidate, or even having the chance voting, more for nostalgia than anything else, Bobby Kennedy.
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