Sometimes I think leftists would rather lose. As long as they go down in a glorious, flaming, spectacularly public way, earning the awe and adoration of their comrades, they are satisfied with the outcome.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James persist in keeping hope alive when it comes to the lawfare being practiced against President-elect Donald Trump.
Bragg is asking Judge Juan Merchan not to throw out the 34-count conviction of Trump a jury returned earlier this year in the hush money case. Letitia James refuses to heed calls to throw the civil lawsuit case out and not allow the ludicrous $450 million judgment to stand.
Bragg and James are trying to keep the cases alive until Trump leaves office in 2029 when they can then send an 82-year-old man to prison. Leftist revenge fantasies have no expiration date.
“Even after the inauguration, defendant’s temporary immunity as the sitting President will still not justify the extreme remedy of discarding the jury’s unanimous guilty verdict and wiping out the already-completed phases of this criminal proceeding,” Bragg and his team of prosecutors wrote in an 81-page legal brief. “Dismissing an indictment after a trial and guilty verdict because the defendant later wins an election would undermine the public’s perception of fairness in the criminal justice system.”
Too late, Al. You've already done that.
Nevertheless, there is a broad consensus among constitutional scholars that a state’s criminal prosecution of a president cannot continue while he’s in office.
Bragg’s team agreed with that principle, but stopped short of saying Trump’s sentencing can’t go forward before Trump is sworn in next month. The sentencing was originally set for Nov. 26 but was put off by the judge after Trump prevailed at the polls last month.
Prosecutors argued that Merchan can use various mechanisms to preserve the guilty verdict while taking steps to shield Trump from consequences that could be seen as hindering his ability to focus on his presidential duties.
Merchan could suspend the case until Trump leaves office, or he could take the high road and promise in advance not to sentence Trump to prison and won't consider Trump's conduct while he's president.
Bragg could also ask Merchan to consider a rarely used legal device known as "abatement" that is usually invoked after a defendant dies. In Trump's case, the convictions would be preserved but end further legal proceedings.
Only a judge who doesn't care about the United States would take any of those options and keep the sword of Damocles balanced over Trump's head for his entire term.
In the case of James and her fraud case against Trump and his company, she has called out what in New York is a common practice of inflating net worth to get better rates on loans and insurance. True, Trump told some whoppers, but the $455 million fine is more than excessive; it's punitive beyond anything the law requires.
Trump's attorney, John Sauer, is lining up his guns for an aggressive appeal.
In late September, Mr. Sauer fiercely disputed the verdict in front of the Manhattan appeals court. Among several arguments he made, he compared the case to a third world-style political prosecution that would never have been brought against any other defendant, and that the case would deter companies from doing business in New York. Several of the five judges on the panel raised skeptical questions about the case, particularly in regard to the size of the $455 million judgment the lower court judge had imposed.
In her Tuesday letter, Ms. Vale argued that there is “no basis” for her office to dismiss the case, principally because civil litigations, unlike criminal cases, are exempt from presidential immunity and do not violate the Constitution. Most notably, she argued, Trump’s conduct does not stem from the time he served as the 45th president.
Why are Bragg and James persisting in what appears to be a personal vendetta under the guise of upholding the "rule of law"? It calls to mind the common belief held by many Southerners after the Civil War in "The Lost Cause." The South didn't lose because of any weakness inherent in the system of slavery. Lost Cause proponents frame the war as a defense of states' rights and of the Southern agrarian economy against supposed "Northern aggression."
Bragg and James are implying that the people of the United States have been denied justice because Trump was elected president. Their prosecutions would have succeeded in sending Trump to jail (or bankrupting him) but for the inconvenient fact that voters rejected their efforts to ruin the former president and elected him to the White House for a second time anyway.
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