To Feed the Crocodiles or To Stand with Trump
Tomorrow might be a big day for 45 . . .
According to Donald Trump, tomorrow we will see him — a former and possibly future president of the United States — indicted and arrested for the minor crime of paying a blackmailer over an alleged affair.
The New York Post reported:
“The FBI, state court officers and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office have also been kept in the loop on security discussions, with the Big Apple bracing for the worst after Trump, 76, urged his followers to ‘take our nation back’ light of his looming indictment, police sources said.”
That he could be arrested for violating campaign laws for reportedly using his own funds to shut someone up is incredible, especially given that recent spectacle the American public endured just before the 2020 midterm election of President Biden being given hours of prime airtime from all three networks so that he could deliver a political speech. This was a clear in-kind political contribution to the Democrats, allowing Biden to tell tens of millions of potential voters that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”
Yet expect no charge against Biden for receiving this gift worth tens or perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars. Trump however may face four years in prison for a $130,000 check.
Law professor Jonathan Turley highlighted the legal ridiculousness of this case:
If former President Donald Trump is indicted, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg would be prosecuting a case that has been widely criticized as long on politics and short on the law.
The courts would have to address a controversial case in which a city prosecutor attempts to prove a federal crime long ago declined by the U.S. Department of Justice. They also would have to deal with a charge brought seven years after the alleged offense, despite a two-year statute of limitations for the underlying misdemeanors (or a five-year period for a felony).
AACONS guest and Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz also addressed the selective persecution of Trump, asking “Does anyone actually believe that if someone else were accused of paying hush money to avoid a sex scandal in the manner that Mr. Trump is suspected of doing, he would be prosecuted?”
Dershowitz adds, “Mr. Trump should not be indicted for novel and unprecedented technical crimes for which no one else would be prosecuted.
“Equal protection of the law requires equal application and non-application of criminal statutes. Mr. Bragg would be violating that important principle if he seeks a grand jury indictment based on what now appears to be the slim evidence and even slimmer legal basis.”
Unfortunately, “Equal protection of the law” is a concept that seems to matter little to the left, if that means seeing Trump behind bars.
It is unfortunate that Manhattan District Attorney Bragg can only be removed from his position by the Governor Hochul, who as a Democrat has little incentive to do so. Any district attorney who abuses his office the way Bragg is doing deserves both impeachment and disbarment.
If I still lived in NYC, I would join in the potential protests, but it would not just be for Trump.
It would be for the conservative judge asked to speak to Stanford Law, only to be met with protestors threatening to rape his daughter.
It would be for the anti-abortion protestor Mark Houck who faced eleven years in federal prison on the thin charge of impeding access to an abortion clinic after he defended his son from an assault.
It would be for TikToker Shumirun Nessa who received threats against her daughters after she exposed a fellow TikTok celebrity who was promoting transgenderism to children,
It would be for all those imprisoned, fired, or killed, for peacefully protesting on January 6th.
It would be for those who call conservatives insurrectionists, tea-baggers, and call for us to be “deprogrammed.”
I argue that Trump, for all his faults, is as much the symbol of American conservatism as anyone has been since the presidency of Ronald Reagan, and, Calvin Coolidge before that.
There are others like him who face fury for standing up to Marxism, abortion, race hustling, the promotion of transgenderism to children, and other evils from the left.
Sacrificing these will not spare us as conservatives; instead it would only delay the day when we will face an emboldened and strengthened enemy, but without them.
As Winston Churchill said in 1940:
“Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last. All of them hope that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured. But I fear greatly that the storm will not pass. It will rage and it will roar ever more loudly, ever more widely.”
— DK