Trump’s Tit-for-Tat Lawfare—or What Exactly? Part Two

Victor Davis Hanson

Another consideration: which is the greater political sin: enforcing the law against an admittedly political enemy, or suspending law enforcement on behalf of a culpable political friend or ally?

Translated: why did the Biden administration drop a developing and likely strong DOJ case against John Bolton once he was determined to ignore a federal judge’s warning from the bench about his use (or transmission) of sensitive or even classified materials, and then publish a 2020 campaign-cycle, tell-all book about the supposedly dastardly Biden opponent and 2020 candidate President Trump?

Why did the Biden administration never investigate what Comey, Brennan, and Clapper were doing in concocting the Steele dossier farce, in opposition to the consensus of their own professional intelligence subordinates, all in order to warp a national election?

Was there any law that Letitia James, Jack Smith, or Fani Willis could break that would have earned them an indictment from the Biden or any state justice department? Certainly, neither Merrick Garland nor blue-state prosecutors worried much that these lawfare hounds were not reporting as income freebie legal services, surveilling the phone records of U.S. senators, lying on federal loan and tax forms, defying court orders, and junketing on the public dime with the intent to deceive authorities?

If these targets are liable to be proven guilty, after being given prior political impunity as political allies from the Biden administration, what is the crime or sin in pursuing indictments against them? Is that retribution or rectification?

Consider also that the majority of these high-profile federal indictments of Trump’s enemies and high officials will take place in the leftwing New York to Washington, D.C. corridor.

Grand Jury indictments will require mostly leftwing jurors to assent. Most were and will be decidedly anti-Trump. But they will be asked to vote to indict or convict a fellow, loud, and much publicized anti-Trump official.

If these cases go to trial, they will likely be played out, as in the past, by anti-Trump federal judges, juries, and in some cases prosecutors. And the bar of conviction of anti-Trumpers will be raised far higher than the reverse of convicting Trump himself—as we saw from the legal travesty of the E. Jean Carrol case before the partisan Judge Kaplan, the Letitia James (who bragged she had her eye of Trump Tower) circus, and the buffoonish and far-left Judge Engoron, or the ridiculous municipal bootstrapping by Alvin Bragg of a supposed federal campaign violation (of no interest to the Biden federal attorneys), before the partisan and unprofessional Judge Merchan.

So far, the Trump White House is not coordinating meetings with country prosecutors who plan to indict Trump enemies, communicating with city prosecutors determined to get Trump’s enemies, and federal prosecutors determined to indict Trump’s enemies—in the fashion of the iconic November 18, 2023, strategies.

Just three days from Trump’s announcement that he would run in 2024, the Biden legal team sprang into action—calling a Georgia county attorney to the White House, appointing a special federal prosecutor, and dispatching a DOJ federal attorney to resign and spearhead yet another local New York get-Trump indictment.

In sum, the Biden lawfare prosecutors counted on leftwing grand and trial juries, and favorable judges because of shared hatred of Trump, the person. If such partisan juries and judges end up indicting and convicting Trump’s enemies it will be despite Trump, not because of him, as was the case with the Biden DOJ.

Federal special prosecutor Jack Smith was appointed to get Trump solely on his record as a partisan zealot, who had infamously wrecked the career of former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell. The latter was finally proven innocent only when the Supreme Court in a historic 9-0 decision reversed and rebuked the loose-cannon Smith’s politically driven vendetta.

To be continued…