Afflicted Democrats just can’t stop targeting Trump
OPINION:
The dormant but deadly disease has sprung back to life — not COVID-19, but Trump Derangement Syndrome. Although Washington has been Trump-free for 26 months, the thought that he could recapture the White House has reinfected his detractors with a long form of the malady they thought they had shaken. Their syndrome puts the health of the republic at stake.
The targeting of former President Donald Trump by the U.S. political establishment has placed him in the crosshairs of Democratic Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. If a Bragg-empaneled grand jury returns an indictment this week, it remains to be seen whether the first arrest of a former president in American history would include a New York City perp walk before a spiteful media with Mr. Trump in handcuffs.
The case illustrates — again — just how afflicted the Democrats of officialdom have grown over the challenge posed by a Republican competitor who would “make America great again.”
“They’re all sick and it’s fake news,” Mr. Trump wrote on his Truth Social media site.
The travesty is intensified by the flimsy case Mr. Bragg has against the former president. Cast in media-speak, it is described as a payment of $130,000 in “hush money” to Stormy Daniels before the 2016 presidential election. The purported charges include falsification of business records, a New York misdemeanor, triggering a violation of campaign finance laws, a federal felony. Drained of innuendo, the payment simply constituted fulfillment of a nondisclosure agreement.
The New York district attorney appears to be fishing in the wrong pond. “This is an effort by a state official to effectively prosecute a federal crime, a crime that the Department of Justice decided not to prosecute,” constitutional expert and George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley told Fox News.
Prosecutors would need to prove the money was paid solely to influence the election, he said, adding that barring legalistic gymnastics, the statute of limitations has expired.
Moreover, if Mr. Bragg is aware that campaign finance violations are as prevalent in politics as the common cold in spring, he doesn’t let on. Then-candidate Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, for example, paid $375,000 for its violations — one of the largest fines ever against a presidential campaign — but no officers of the law dared to darken his door.
Only the fairness-free cannot see the charges as Democrats’ most preposterous attack yet on a former fellow party member who abandoned their ranks when he concluded that he loves America and they do not. Earlier injustices include a Russia collusion investigation, dual impeachments, congressional committee insinuations of a Jan. 6 “insurrection,” an FBI raid on the Trump Mar-a-Lago estate, and a public release of Mr. Trump’s tax returns.
An Atlanta-area grand jury reportedly has recently leaked possible racketeering and conspiracy charges against the former president, supposedly occurring during the 2020 presidential campaign. A coincidence? President Franklin Roosevelt once said: “In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”
Regardless of whether Mr. Trump could actually win another presidential term, a successful Democrat-led plot to take out a Republican opponent would mean fair elections in America are hereafter forfeit.
