As Donald Trump’s New York Trial continued, Newsmax columnists made sure to rage about the purported injustice of it all. Nicholas Chamberas played the Stalin card in a May 16 column:
“Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime,” or alternately: “Give me the man and I will give you the case against him.” Those chilling words are credited to Lavrentiy Beria, and the Stalinist-era judge Andrey Vyshinsky.
Beria was the notorious director of the Soviet “secret police” (The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, or NKVD) under Joseph Stalin. Beria’s actions generated countless “show trials” to justify gruesome executions of innocent people whose “guilt” had been pre-ordained long before any “trial” took place.
While former President Donald J. Trump does not face a physical execution in the “Stormy Daniels Trial,” the goal is to execute his political career and personal reputation, rendering him incapable of ever again seeking public office.
One may be justified in drawing parallels between Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg prosecuting this outlandish case and Beria finding “crimes” against those who displeased Stalin.
[…]The Manhattan show trial against President Trump is a gross abuse of power; it is a Kafkaesque, profligate, and disgusting spectacle.
It should terrify all of us.
Trump’s pollster, John McLaughlin, served up yet another pro-Trump poll of dubious quality in his May 20 column:
Over the past month the most covered political story in America has been what we call the “Biden-Bragg-Colangelo” prosecution of President Trump.
This government-inspired circus has had a political impact: Donald Trump has strengthened politically, as Joe Biden has weakened.
Thus, after a year of indictments and legal targeting of Donald Trump and his allies, Trump still leads Biden in our latest poll Trump 47%, Biden 43%. [This national poll of 1,000 likely voters, +/-3.1% at the 95% confidence interval, was completed between May 9 and 15, 2024].
The polling data shows a majority of voters want the political prosecutions of Trump to stop. At the same time voters have factored Joe Biden’s legal persecution of Trump into their voting calculus.
Here are some takeaways:
- 66% of all voters say that politics has played a role in the indictments of President Trump.
- 59% of all voters say that Joe Biden has played a role in the indictments of President Trump.
- 53% of all voters think Joe Biden really wants to stop Donald Trump from winning by putting him in jail [only 33% say Biden doesn’t want to put Trump in jail].
After four years of Joe Biden, Americans know that they’re not better off.
Michael Dorstewitz huffed in a May 22 column:
Events and evidence released during the previous two days reveal that the Democratic Party is focusing on a single strategy to achieve victory in the 2024 elections: Remove former President Trump from the equation, using any means available.
Trump’s lawyer’s rested their case yesterday in the Manhattan “hush money” trial.
At this point Judge Juan Merchan will let the lawyers know what instructions he’ll give to the jury after each side submits their own proposed jury instructions.
On Tuesday of next week the lawyers will present their closing arguments and Merchan will give the jury its instructions.
Then it will all be up to the jurors.
But Monday it was the stuff of George Orwell, Star Chamber trials and banana republics, according to former Harvard law professor, celebrated lawyer, and constitutional scholar Akan Dershowitz.
[…]Dershowitz reported that Merchan routinely excluded obviously relevant evidence offered by the defense, while permitting the inclusion of irrelevant but salacious evidence for the prosecution.
But perhaps the most outrageous incident was when Merchan completely lost his composure and cleared the courtroom because a defense witness, attorney Robert Costello, raised his eyebrows in reaction to one of the judge’s insane rulings.
[…]Mercian later refused to permit the testimony of a federal election official, who would have testified that the alleged “hush money” scheme did not amount to a violation of federal election law, contrary to the prosecution’s theory.
That’s presumably a reference to potential witness Bradley Smith. But Merchan didn’t block him from testifying — Trump’s legal team did not call on him after Merchan refused Trump’s demand to greatly broaden the scope of the trial.
Dorstewitz served up more pro-Trump talking point reinforcement in his May 29 column:
If there was ever any doubt that the string of indictments and lawsuits targeting former President Trump were rooted in politics, that doubt should have disappeared Tuesday morning.
The Biden reelection campaign held a press briefing yesterday at a questionable location — in front of the Manhattan courthouse where jurors were about to hear closing arguments in the so-called “hush money” trial against Trump.
Donald Trump Jr. recognized the implications right away.
“In case you needed more evidence that all of these BS cases were quarterbacked by Team Biden to interfere in the 2024 election, the Biden campaign is now showing up in NYC to explicitly cheerlead the political prosecution of my father,” he said.
[…]And like everything else, the Trump lawsuits and indictments have nothing to do with a quest for justice. They’re a failing, feeble last-ditch effort to save a failing, feeble campaign, to extend a failing, feeble administration, run by a failing, feeble president.
And it’s coming down at a time when “Dems [are] in full-blown ‘freakout’ over Biden.”
It’s all politics, and the Democratic presidential rally in front of the courthouse where Biden’s No.-1 competitor’s trial was winding down proves it — transparently so.
It’s not just lawfare on a grand scale — it’s election interference as America has never seen since Nov. 3, 2020.
Unsurprisingly, Dorstewitz offered no evidence of that purported “election interference” in 2020.