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ACCORDING TO LIZ - Last month, in an alarming decision by an elected public official, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office announced a four-year “pause” of the Criminal Creep’s case until “after the end of Defendant’s upcoming presidential term.”
Shortly thereafter, the latter announced his attorney, Emil Bove, would be rewarded with a senior spot in the Justice Department.
How just!
As one point in a series of e-mails exchanged with the court of Judge Juan Merchan, the District Attorney wrote:
“The stay, and dismissal, are necessary to avoid unconstitutional impediments to President Trump’s ability to govern.”
Of course.
Subversion of the rule of law was starkly evident in the Pres-to-Come’s interview on NBC’s Meet the Press broadcast nationally on Sunday, where he vowed to pardon duly-convicted Capitol insurgents, and jail opponents including Liz Cheney.
What next?
Even if the Criminal-in-Chief’s convictions for felonies committed still stand, the decisions made overtly and behind closed doors impacting every American will set dangerous precedents.
Isn’t prison the proper place for people who break the rules of a civilized society?
Should we let rapists loose until they realize their full potential while their victims continue to suffer?
Leave murderers on the street so they can continue to assassinate with abandon so long as they hold sway over elected officials?
How can Americans ever trust their judicial system again?
Will one justice for the rich and powerful, whether for the Evil Egotist or Joe Biden’s son, prevail over equal justice for all?
Elected officials from schoolboards to the White House are supposed to be public servants. As public servants they should be selfless, not selfish, and accountable for all their actions, both good and bad.
If servants can’t be disciplined for flagrant disregard of the laws, if career criminals can dictate from on the Supreme Court and in the White House…
Richard Allen, Reagan’s first National Security Advisor was forced to resign in 1982 after $1,000 in cash was found in a safe in his former office, even though he was never charged with a crime, even though the Justice Department cleared him of any wrongdoing. What does that say about American mores and the judicial system today?
The Creepy Conman was convicted in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records over payments made to his then-lawyer Michael Cohen to reimburse a $130,000 hush money payment to adult-film star Stormy Daniels to keep her from speaking out about an affair before the 2016 election.
Convicted. It’s not an allegation. He’s a felon. And merits a sentence appropriate to the money he spent and the power he purchased.
This is not someone stealing a few cans of formula because his baby is crying from hunger.
But it appears that the District Attorney Alvin Bragg bowed to shadowy pressure, possibly pursuant to the egregious ruling by certain Jackass Justices – some of them criminal themselves, some in the pockets of the plutocracy – which exonerates “official acts” by a sitting president from being used as evidence in criminal trials.
Is the Wacky Wastrel sitting? Or pulling strings to subvert justice?
The Leaping Liar’s attorneys didn’t raise objections during the trial to most of the evidence they now question, so why can it now be challenged? Can any miscreant do so in the future?
Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over the Immoral One’s fraud verdict was set to weigh in on whether last summer’s Supreme Court decision had any relevance whatsoever to the hush money conviction when he was blind-sided by the office that initially brought the charges against the Then-Ex: that the Convict should not be sentenced until after his second stay in the White House.
How does breaking the law to put himself in office and lying about it when in office give anyone, especially a president who should be held to higher standards and whose personal morality will affect decisions made in office, have any relevance to the sentencing of a convicted criminal? Who should, instead, be headed for the Big House.
Then, Special Counsel Jack Smith who was pursuing the federal case against the Angry Agitator for his boosterism of the Jan. 6 rioters moved to dismiss charges in that case… and the overseeing judge quickly fell into line. Ditto, the Mar-a-Lago documents case went down the drain.
And the option to refile charges after the Demeaning Despot leaves office is a non-starter with the five-year statute of limitations on most federal offenses.
Smith said he ended the cases not because of their merits but because longstanding Justice Department policy forbids prosecuting sitting presidents because it would violate the Constitution and interfere with the working of the executive branch.
Putting a capricious felon in charge of the country would seem a far more pressing concern.
By effectively closing the door on the Justice Department efforts to hold Donald J. Trump accountable in the election and classified documents cases, the Special Counsel has permitted the Felon-in-Chief to escape scot-free from charges that would have landed any ordinary American in prison and, for some, drawn the death penalty for treason.
The only remaining case against the Desperate Denier is on his subversion of the Georgia election process. Trial for his egregious intervention there had been effectively bottlenecked awaiting a ruling by the state’s Court of Appeals on if Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should be disqualified, diverting attention from the truly criminal actions of the Bullying Buffoon.
It certainly gave him ample opportunity to personally and permanently derail his prosecution; to wit his lawyers recently filed with the same Court to dismiss all criminal charges positing that the Flagrant F*ker’s imminent return to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue invoked the get-out-of-jail-free card granted him by the Supremes.
There is a clear pattern here and it doesn’t bode well for justice or the future of equality under the law in the United States.
Dodger Don is set to regain office without clarity on the scope of presidential immunity, and with a lingering cloud over whether outside special counsels can investigate high-level wrongdoing.
People learn from consequences to their (and others’) actions.
Accountability. It appears that the Felonious Monk-y has rarely learned anything in the past and the lack of consequences for his criminal actions now does not bode well for the future.
Furthermore, Republicans are handing the Fascist-in-Chief even broader powers to force American service providers to allow warrantless wiretapping.
Less than one hundred years after the nation’s birth, in facing the greatest challenge yet to the nascent country, Abraham Lincoln vowed that “Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth,” affirming that the purpose of government was to serve the citizens.
What will happen to the world’s longest-standing democracy if “We the people” continue to allow today’s leaders to violate the laws of the land with impunity?
(Liz Amsden resides in Vermont and is a regular contributor to CityWatch on issues that she is passionate about. She can be reached at [email protected].)
