John R. Houk, Blog Editor
June 6, 2024
Blog Editor: I am in
the middle of enjoying my 34th Wedding Anniversary (6/5/1990)
vacation. Thus, this post is something I putting up just to add a bit of
continuity to posting and will not be sharing as much as I typically do on
various Social Media Platforms. Perhaps if you agree with my point if view, you
could share.
The TomKlingenstein.com
website shares a John Eastman post entitled, “Donald
Trump: Enemy of the State”. Eastman examines the ludicrous
political persecution of Donald Trump’s recent Kangaroo stacked Court
conviction which is some information Voters should become aware.
THEN a recent PragerU
email represented a 2017 video from Dinesh D’Souza explaining that Fascism (which
also means Nazism) is as much a radical Leftist Socialist construct as the
variations of Marxism is. Title: “Is Fascism Right Or Left? |
5 Minute Video”.
JRH 6/6/24
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Donald Trump: Enemy of the State
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[Actual] President Trump (TomKlingenstein.com Photo)
By John Eastman
June 4, 2024
[TomKlingenstein.com] Editor’s
Note: The group quota regime advances and guards its power through lawfare—the
weaponization of our legal system against political enemies. John Eastman has
been relentlessly targeted by the regime’s lawfare campaigns for the supposed
crime of advising Donald Trump on the legal issues of the 2020 election. Yet
even Eastman’s mistreatment pales in comparison to the regime’s hounding of
President Trump himself.
In this analysis, Dr. Eastman
brings a lawyer’s perspective to the political prosecutions of the former
president, contrasting Trump’s treatment to that of Hillary Clinton, the
regime’s favored candidate—whom Trump defeated even despite egregious malfeasance
by the Clinton campaign in collusion with the administrative state. The picture
that emerges is one of two separate justice systems: one for the friends and
tools of the group quota regime, and a far less forgiving one for any critics.
The course of our politics and the fate of our nation depend in large part on
recognition of that fact.
Donald Trump
was a celebrity long before he descended the golden escalator in Trump Tower to
announce his bid for the presidency in 2015. It is a common fact of life that
hucksters of various stripes will try to cash in on their dealings with a
celebrity—either going public with private interactions that would remain
private with normal folk, or distorting such private interactions into
something they were not in order to get paid off for the mere nuisance value.
Such appears to be the case with Stephanie Clifford, the
porn star best known by her stage name of Stormy Daniels. She claims that she
and Donald Trump had a one-night sexual encounter at a celebrity golf
tournament in Nevada back in 2006, when Trump was host of the television
series The Apprentice. Trump denies that the sexual encounter
ever occurred. I don’t have any basis to know whether or not it did, but it
turns out, in Alvin Bragg’s mind, it doesn’t matter.
Bragg is, of course, the New York district attorney who
prosecuted Trump for filing business records claiming that reimbursement to
Trump’s lawyer for payments he made to Ms. Clifford to keep the story quiet
were “legal expenses.” In Bragg’s version, if Clifford’s story was true, then
Cohen’s payment, reimbursed by Trump according, apparently, to the jury’s
findings (though that fact, too, was hotly contested by Trump), was designed to
prevent a negative story from coming out during the presidential campaign, and
therefore to influence the election. Even if it was false, the payment, a
nuisance settlement, was designed to prevent negative publicity and therefore
influence the election. In either case, it was not a “legal expense,” according
to Bragg, but a campaign expense. For Bragg, that turned the normal business
records misstatement (if it even was a misstatement; payment to settle a
threatened nuisance suit is often treated as a “legal expense”) from a
misdemeanor under New York law into a felony because the misdemeanor offense
was used to hide another supposed crime.
Here’s where the double standard rears its ugly head. In
2016, Hillary Clinton’s campaign committee and the Democratic National
Committee funneled hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of dollars through
her law firm to fund the hiring of foreign agents who colluded with officials
of the federal government to create a false narrative that Trump was colluding
with Russia to have Russia manipulate the U.S. presidential election in his
favor. Those funds were falsely reported as “legal services” and “legal and
compliance consulting” instead of opposition research, in violation of the
Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971. Ms. Clinton’s campaign and the DNC were
fined more than $100,000 for the illegal reporting, but no one was criminally
prosecuted for it.
The double standard breaks down at this point, but not in
ways that support Bragg’s prosecution of Trump. Clinton’s false reporting
masked what was clearly a campaign expenditure. For reasons I’ll discuss in a
moment, Trump’s did not. Worse, that false opposition research, falsely
reported, was then used by government officials to obtain FISA warrants to spy
on Ms. Clinton’s opponent during the campaign, after Trump was elected, and
even after he was inaugurated as President. But for a minor fine and chastisement
of one of the officials involved who actually doctored a document that was
presented to the FISA court, no one has personally suffered any consequence for
this illegal scheme, arguably the greatest political scandal in our nation’s
history. Trump’s conduct, even if all true, pales in comparison.
But there is another aspect to this whole controversy that
presents a double standard of a different sort. Based on the above, the charges
never should have been brought. The statute of limitations for the misdemeanor
offense, if it was an offense at all, had long since passed. Tying it to a
purported federal offense in order to revive the statute of limitations as well
as turn the misdemeanor into a felony involved a “creative” use of the law that
prosecutors would normally not entertain – indeed, Bragg’s predecessor
specifically declined to bring such a prosecution.
So, too, with the supposed Federal Election Campaign Act
violation. Unlike with Clinton’s case, there was no violation here, much less a
crime. Indeed, had Trump used campaign funds to pay what is essentially a
settlement of a private dispute, that would have been a violation of federal
campaign finance law. Campaign funds cannot be used for such purposes, even if
the private expense would tangentially benefit, or avoid harm to, the campaign.
In my view, this aspect of the case presents the most obvious grounds for
reversal of the “guilty” verdict on appeal.
In his rulings on competing pre-trial motions in
limine (motions to exclude evidence), Judge Merchan allowed the
prosecution to introduce evidence that Trump’s ethically challenged lawyer,
Michael Cohen, had pled guilty to a violation of the Federal Election Campaign
Act as a result of his payment to Ms. Clifford. But Judge Merchan prohibited
Trump’s lawyers from offering expert opinion evidence, from the former Chairman
of the Federal Election Commission, that this was not a violation of federal
election law. Although expert opinion on legal issues is normally the province
of the court, in this case, Judge Merchan reportedly did not instruct the jury
as to the elements of any purported federal campaign act violation. The jury
was thus left with evidence of a guilty plea admitting to such a violation, and
no counterbalancing evidence pointing out the legal infirmity in that plea.
Worse, the Judge apparently also instructed the jurors that they need not even
agree on which of three possible crimes triggered the election of the
misdemeanor offense to a felony.
This is not “Equal Justice Under Law,” the promise so boldly
proclaimed in marble atop the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. It is
not even “justice” at all. The only questions that now remain are whether the
appellate courts in New York or the Supreme Court of the United States will
step in to remedy this travesty of justice—and whether they do so before it is
too late.
Dr. John Eastman, formerly a constitutional law professor
and law school Dean, is a Senior Fellow at The Claremont Institute. He
represented President Trump in various challenges to illegality in the 2020
election.
© 2024 Tom Klingenstein
Youtube VIDEO: Is Fascism Right Or Left? |
5 Minute Video
Posted by PragerU
Posted on Dec 4, 2017
Every Republican president since the 1970s has been called a
fascist. Ironic, no? After all, fascism has its roots in the left. Dinesh
D'Souza, author of The Big Lie, explains.
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