You say you want a revolution?

In Charging Trump, Biden Lets Loose the Furies
If this turns out to be a political prosecution, the damage to our democracy would be worse than any charge handed up against the 45th president.
Friday, June 9, 202307:40:50 am

The handing up of charges against President Trump lets loose the furies against the candidate who is leading the Republican field against President Biden. It’s a moment to remember that all the executive power of the United States is vested in the president. Moreover, the charges are reportedly over a species of peccadillo — retention of classified information — for which Mr. Biden has also come under scrutiny but is unlikely to be pursued.

While the indictment is not yet public, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, James Trusty, took to CNN to disclose that the accusations include conspiracy, false statements, obstruction of justice, and illegally retaining classified documents under the Espionage Act. These charges include felonies carrying years in prison. There are reportedly seven counts, and Mr. Trump will appear in court at Miami on Tuesday. Claims he: “I’m an innocent man.”

The burden to rebut that presumption of innocence lies solely on the prosecutors, but it is not too soon to speculate that their tasks will be made easier by, if the reports are accurate, Mr. Trump’s own behavior. It is difficult to understand the reported stonewalling and movements of memos and memorabilia between offices and storage rooms. If there is indeed audio of Mr. Trump discussing a classified document, that is the kind of evidence of which prosecutors dream.

It demands no equivalence between what Mr. Trump is alleged to have done at Mar-a-Lago and the still-unclear contours of how Mr. Biden handled documents from his tenure as Vice President to wonder at the sight of criminal charges being brought for behavior that echoes, even if it does not replicate, that of the man at the White House. Documents were reportedly stashed next to Mr. Biden’s Corvette, among other locations.

In a constitutional sense, Mr. Trump is correct to lay the responsibility for this prosecution on Mr. Biden. The special counsel and the attorney general ultimately report to him, as does the entire executive. Given that singular authority, it is inevitable — and understandable — that millions of Americans are going to see in this prosecution the taint of politics, an attempt to hobble the Republican frontrunner as the campaign moves into high gear.

This is a serious issue. “The weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society,” Governor DeSantis tweeted last night, though he has broken with the former president politically. “We have for years witnessed an uneven application of the law depending upon political affiliation.” That view is widely shared, and the issue will be hanging over the case throughout what could be a long prosecution.

Particularly because the presidency’s power entails the doctrine of prosecutorial discretion; he cannot be forced to bring any case. The Department of Justice’s own guidance notes that the “prosecutor has wide latitude in determining when, whom, how, and even whether to prosecute for apparent violations of federal criminal law.” Prosecution is not recommended when “there exists an adequate non-criminal alternative.”

We thought Alan Dershowitz made this point well in his piece in the Sun last night. He calls for waiting for the facts to emerge. For if this turns out to be a political case — one that wouldn’t have been levied had Mr. Trump not been running for president, one calculated to pre-empt the voters — the damage to our democracy done by the Justice Department would be worse than any charge it has handed up against the 45th president.
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https://www.nysun.com/article/in-ch...se+the+Furies&utm_campaign=Morning+Sun+6/9/23

 

Indictment of Trump — the Leading Candidate To Unseat the Administration — Is a Moment To Keep an Open Mind and Wait for the Facts
The burden is on this administration to demonstrate that the case is so strong that failing to bring it would be a great injustice.

The indictment of President Trump better be the strongest case of obstruction of justice since Richard Nixon. Anything short of that will smack of a partisan double standard. For never before in American history has the leading candidate to unseat the incumbent President been indicted by the incumbent President’s administration.​

The burden is on this administration to demonstrate that the case is so strong that failing to bring it would be a great injustice. It must be far stronger than the cases that were not brought against Hillary Clinton, Joseph Biden, Sandy Berger, and Mike Pence. Perhaps it passes that test, and if it does there will be no basis for any complaint.

If it does not, the indictment of Donald Trump will seriously damage the neutrality of America’s rule of law. So let’s see what the indictment says, what the facts are and what the law is. Let’s not rush to judgment on either side. Let’s be certain that this passes a rigorous test that must be applied when a candidate for president is indicted.

Elections should be decided by the voters, not by prosecutors, judges or jurors. If there is any doubt about whether a serious crime has been committed by a presidential candidate, that doubt should be resolved by the voters, not by prosecutors who come from an administration that the indicted candidate is trying to unseat.

The Biden administration has a heavy burden to demonstrate that they had no alternative but to prosecute. Maybe this case can meet that high standard, but citizens have a right to be skeptical. Recall that President Nixon was forced to resign not because Democrats demanded that he leave office, but because his fellow Republicans did so.

The indictment against Mr. Trump must be strong enough to generate the kind of bipartisan support that led Richard Nixon to leave office. To be sure, times have changed since the Nixon resignation. We are a more partisan and more divided nation, but there are reasonable Republicans and Democrats who are not necessarily part of the extreme partisanism that afflicts today’s Republicans and Democrats.

Let us see whether moderate Republicans support this indictment. I predicted in my book “Get Trump” that he would not be indicted merely for unauthorized possession of classified material, because so many Democrats have been guilty of the same crime. I predicted that if he were indicted it would be for process crimes such as obstruction of justice.

It must be understood that obstruction of justice requires more than refusing to cooperate with prosecutors. To their credit President Biden and the former vice president, Mike Pence, did cooperate when it was discovered that they had unauthorized possession of classified material. Mr. Trump’s failure to do so, though, is not a crime.

The Constitution empowers people being investigated for criminal conduct to refuse to cooperate with prosecutors and indeed to obstruct their efforts by constitutionally authorized means, such as invoking the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments. Whether Mr. Trump went beyond that and crossed the line into unlawfully obstructive behavior is a matter of evidence, to which we are not privy.

So let us all keep an open mind until we know all of the facts, but let’s remain skeptical about an incumbent administration prosecuting the leading candidate to unseat that administration in the forthcoming election.

https://www.nysun.com/article/indic...t-to-keep-an-open-mind-and-wait-for-the-facts