MOSHE HILL OPINION COLUMNS APRIL 04 2023
Selective enforcement of the law is tyranny. The arbitrary use of power based on personal or political likes or dislikes is something that nearly everyone should agree is morally abhorrent. That is what we have seen this week – not only with the malicious prosecution and indictment of President Trump, but with the underreported and swept aside stormings of two state capitols in Kentucky and Tennessee.
Obviously, the biggest news of the week is the Trump indictment, which is a complete farce and mockery of the judicial system. While pundits claim that “no one is above the law,” in DA Alvin Bragg’s New York, nearly everyone is above the law. This is the District Attorney who reduced 52% of felony charges to misdemeanors, where Palestinians who viciously beat Jews on the streets get sweetheart plea deals, and where franchises are closing their stores because they can’t absorb the monetary losses anymore.
The precedent that Bragg is setting with this indictment is an incredibly dangerous one, and he’s doing it for his own legacy, not because he cares about a grave injustice that occurred. According to legal scholar and attorney Alan Dershowitz, “Any first-year student could win this case,” but with the caveat of “if the name wasn’t Donald Trump and if it wasn’t in Manhattan.” This means that this isn’t about the law; it’s about the defendant and the location of the prosecution.
Since Alvin Bragg is so awful at actually prosecuting crime, a perverse reading of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause should apply to President Trump. A clause of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution that means a state’s laws must treat any person in its jurisdiction the same way it would treat other people in similar circumstances, preventing the passing or enforcement of discriminatory laws. Would anyone else in similar circumstances be indicted for this? Highly doubtful.
No one articulated how backwards this prosecution is better than former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. In reaction to this indictment, Pelosi stated on Twitter that “No one is above the law, and everyone has the right to a trial to prove innocence.” That is not the rights of the accused, and Twitter Community Notes pointed out. “Ms. Pelosi mistakenly says that Trump can prove his innocence at trial. Law in the US assumes the innocence of a defendant and the prosecution must prove guilt for a conviction.” Pelosi and Democrats don’t care about the law, the presumption of innocence. Trump is guilty until he proves otherwise.
There’s also the issue that this is now a precedent, and the floodgates will open. Any District Attorney or Attorney General looking to make his or her name known in Republican circles will be empaneling Grand Juries to investigate Joe Biden, Barack Obama, or any past or future Democratic candidate – and if they’re not, they should. Let’s not forget that the sitting president of the United States has massive accusations against him regarding the information found on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Just in case, let’s review.
According to a report by the New York Post in October 2020, a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, contained emails that suggested he had arranged a meeting between his father, then-Vice-President Joe Biden, and a top executive at the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. The emails also allegedly revealed that Hunter had asked for “advice” on how to distribute money from the company to his family members, including his father.
One email, allegedly sent by Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma, thanked Hunter for introducing him to his father and expressed hope that they could continue to work together. Another email allegedly referenced a proposed equity split of “20” for “H” and “10 held by H for the big guy,” with no further elaboration on who the “big guy” referred to. Hunter’s business partner Tony Bobulinski, who was brought in to structure the deal, publicly identified “the Big Guy” as Joe Biden when the emails came to light in the run up to the 2020 election.
Is this a bigger deal than hush money paid by Trump’s lawyer that the lawyer himself then claimed in a 2018 memo that he was never reimbursed by the Trump campaign for? Yes, it is.
Aside from this monumental story that has national implications on the soul of the country and the 2024 presidential race, there were two other very large stories this week that few legacy media outlets care to cover: the storming of two state capitols in Kentucky and Tennessee. It’s already been forgotten, but a similar incident happened last month in Oklahoma. Radical left-wing protesters illegally trespassed on the capitol buildings, attempting to intimidate or threaten the legislators there into modifying their votes.
Does this sound familiar at all? It should, because on January 6, 2021, when a group of Trump supporters broke into the U.S. Capitol, it was considered to be a day akin to 9/11, when terrorists crashed planes into the Twin Towers killing nearly 3,000 Americans, and December 7, 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, bringing America into World War II. Yet will anyone remember March 29 or March 30, 2023, as a “day that lives in infamy”? Will those who broke into the capitols even be prosecuted? Or will they get a slap on the wrist because they conducted their illegal activity under a Pride flag?
This is not a constitutional republic or a democracy; this is a tyrannical state with a two-tiered system of justice. No matter how you feel about Trump or Republicans, you should be fearful of the implications that this prosecution has for our country, our future, and our place in the world.
