Donald Trump, the first ex-president ever convicted of a felony, claims he is the victim of a “witch hunt”. Rather than accept responsibility for his actions resulting in 34 felony convictions, a sexual battery conviction (that the judge called, “Rape, by any definition of the word”) and a fraud conviction, Trump rants, “This is all done by Biden and his people!”

Other favorite speech clips, “This is done by Washington! No one has ever seen anything like this!” And, of course, it is all a “witch hunt”.

Trump complains President Joe Biden and the Department of Justice are engineering court cases to derail Trump’s presidential campaign.

Interesting. Before and during the Republican primaries, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former Ambassador Nicki Haley each polled stronger than Trump in a general election match-up against Biden. Insofar as the election, Democrats would logically do everything possible to keep Trump out of jail. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nikki-haley-fares-best-against-biden-2024-presidential-election-poll/

Nevertheless, Trump is sure the all-powerful “Deep State” has singled him out for persecution like “no one since Jesus Christ”. Is there anything to this, or is this just more Trumpian lies and B.S.?

Differences between a witch hunt, a conspiracy and a real investigation?

The informal definition of a witch hunt is, “a campaign directed against a person or group holding unorthodox or unpopular views”.

Trump is racist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, narcissistic and misogynistic. These are not unorthodox or unpopular views since he is the head of a political party whose members mimic these traits. That eliminates the argument that he is the victim of a witch hunt (as defined above).

Trump is a victim of real investigations, and there are reasons for this. Investigations are centered on facts. Factual investigations lead to trials. If the facts/evidence are irrefutable, the trials result in convictions. Convictions typically result in some form of punishment for the perpetrator. When this happens, we say, “Justice was done.” Our criminal justice system is based on these premises.

Trump and his backers continually try to undermine our judicial system with their fact free conspiracies. Consequently, as with their election conspiracies, if their case makes it to trial, they lose. Evidence and facts are essential to winning in court. https://www.frugalron.com/what-is-wrong-with-these-people/

For Trumpians, all  facts and evidence are just noise. For these people, any utterance from Trump is gospel and should never be questioned. Unfortunately for them, Trump’s proclamations have zero weight in court.

Trump’s court cases (all backed by facts/evidence)

Before going further to decide if Trump is the victim of a vendetta, a quick recap of Trump’s completed and pending court cases is helpful.

1. In a state civil trial in New York, a jury convicted Trump of sexual battery of E. Jean Carroll. The presiding judge described the sexual battery as ”… rape by any definition of the word. The jury ordered Trump to pay Carroll $5 million for defaming her. https://www.frugalron.com/republicans-and-rape/
2. The same judge, with a different jury, found Trump guilty of additional defamations against Carroll. The jury ordered Trump to pay Carroll another $88 million.
3. Trump was sued by New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office for grossly overvaluing his properties. Overvaluing these assets dramatically improved Trump’s balance sheet. This enabled Trump to get lower insurance costs and lower interest rates. Judge Arthur Engoron found Trump and his two adult sons guilty of financial fraud and ordered them to pay the State of New York $454.2 million. The judge will also weigh an additional $250 million in penalties and some remaining claims in a non-jury trial slated to start on October 2, 2024.
4. Trump was charged with 34 criminal counts (felonies) for falsifying business records to cover-up hush money payments to his sextress, Stormy Daniels. A jury found Trump guilty of all counts. Sentencing is pending.
5. A grand jury returned a federal indictment charging Trump with four counts of 2020 presidential election interference. The case is pending.
6. Another federal grand jury indicted Trump for stealing government documents. Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case, ruling Special Council Jack Smith was improperly appointed. The Justice Department is appealing the decision.
7. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s office followed an Atlanta, Georgia grand jury’s instructions and charged Trump and 18 others for 2020 election interference. The charges include violations of Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO. Trump himself is charged with 13 felonies. The trial is on hold.
8. Trump also faces three additional civil suits brought by Democratic members of Congress and Capitol police officers seeking to punish him for inciting the January 6, 2021, riot.

Are Biden and the Justice Department conspiring?

If Joe Biden ordered the Justice Department to keep Trump from winning reelection in 2024, they’ve done a horrible job. Trump started his reelection campaign even before leaving the White House in 2021.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Jack Smith as a Special Prosecutor to investigate Trump’s 2020 election interference on November 18, 2022. This was almost 22 months after Garland took office. Trump was not investigated during those 22 months. Logically, if Biden and Garland wanted to “crucify” Trump, Smith would have been appointed the day after Garland took office, rather than almost two years later.

There are also the cases against Trump that Garland didn’t prosecute. Trump’s first impeachment was for his withholding Congressionally approved military funding for Ukraine unless Ukrainian President Zelenskyy started a sham investigation of Joe Biden. Trump should have been tried in criminal court for extortion.

The Mueller Report listed several areas to investigate Trump for criminal activity that Mueller didn’t have the authority to pursue. Garland’s Justice Department did not follow-up on any of these.

Garland also passed on prosecuting Trump for 2016 election fraud in the hush money case. Because the Justice Department didn’t prosecute Trump, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office took the case. They converted this into the falsifying business records case (#4 above) in New York State Court. The federal election fraud case would have been easier to get a conviction. It also would have had a longer prison sentence than the Manhattan case.

About the Manhattan case, Trump claimed, “They have me sitting here for a Biden trial. It’s a Biden trial.” Clearly, if Biden and Garland wanted to “get” Trump, they would have prosecuted him themselves in a federal court on the election interference charge. If they had done that, Trump would be in jail today.

Attorney General Garland, slacker in chief

After Trump’s weaponization of the Justice Department, Garland was obsessed with regaining the departments reputation for impartiality. Unfortunately, what he accomplished was to make the department impotent. If not for the House January 6, hearings and the political pressure they generated, I doubt Garland would have ever appointed a Special Prosecutor or charged Trump with anything.

Garland did an admirable job prosecuting January 6 rioters. But the riot happened because, over several months, Trump hyped-up his low intelligence and violent followers with lies about the stolen election.

Forget the nonsense about a Biden/Garland witch hunt against Trump. Garland should have done his job of enforcing the law. If the investigation of Trump’s 2020 election interference, his stealing of government documents and the 2016 election interference was started as soon as Garland assumed office, Trump would be in jail now, and for the rest of his life.

Has anyone been treated as unjustly as Donald Trump?

No matter what political party you support, if you run for president or vice president, your whole life will be publicly investigated. If Trump were reasonably intelligent, he would know that.

A few examples of what Trump calls “witch hunts”:

• In 1952, Senator Richard Nixon was going to be Dwight Eisenhower’s running mate. Nixon was accused of having an $18,000 hidden political fund. Nixon escaped the charges with his famous Checkers speech. (Checkers was his dog.)
• In 1969, Senator Ted Kennedy drove a car off a Chappaquiddick bridge. Later investigators found Kennedy escaped and left his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne to drown while Kennedy found a phone and called his political consultant/lawyer instead of the police; who could have saved Kopechne. Kennedy’s presidential hopes drowned with Kopechne.
• In 1972, Senator Thomas Eagleton was selected as Democratic Presidential candidate George McGovern’s vice president. Eighteen days later, it was revealed that in the 1960’s, Eagleton was hospitalized three times for depression and was given electroshock therapy. Eagleton stepped down.
• In 1973, Vice president Spiro Agnew was accused of criminal conspiracy, bribery, extortion and tax fraud for taking financial kickbacks while Governor of Maryland. Agnew resigned as vice-president and was later disbarred.
• In 1974, Richard Nixon resigned as president after a multi-year investigation. Nixon obstructed justice in ordering the FBI Director not to investigate the Watergate break-in.
• In 1994, Kenneth Starr was appointed by Congress as a Special Counsel to investigate President Bill Clinton’s real estate dealings. Finding nothing of interest there, Starr and his Commission expanded their probe into Clinton’s sexual improprieties.
• In 2011, pizza millionaire Herman Cain ended his presidential campaign amid numerous allegations of sexual impropriety and harassment.
• In 2018, Senator Gary Hart was the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination. There were rumors of Hart’s marital infidelity. Hart challenged a reporter to follow him. The reporter took him up on his offer and found Hart leaving a Miami Beach harbor on a boat called “Monkey Business”. The reporter also got a picture of Hart with a gorgeous blonde woman on his lap. They were on the boat with another couple. Hart’s presidential aspirations were finished.
• For the sake of space, Rudy Guiliani, John Edwards and Al Gore all had their extra-marital affairs exposed. All three had wives undergoing cancer treatments at the time of their dalliances. Edwards was prosecuted, but not convicted of funneling campaign funds to his mistress. All three of their political careers were finished.

Trump’s treatment is no worse than any of the people listed above. Likewise, I’m sure Bobby Kennedy Jr. didn’t want his presidential candidacy defined by his brain worm. Anyone wanting to be president or vice-president (even Donald Trump, who is supposedly anointed by God) will get this same level of scrutiny.

Trump has not been treated as unfairly as Jesus. Donald Trump has a persecution complex. Sadly, too many voters are suckered in by this con man.

Should Trump have been prosecuted?

Many people, that should know better, believe Trump’s criminal transgressions should be ignored. They point to how his poll numbers increased with each indictment.

The reality is, we are still a nation of laws. If any of us breaks the law, we need to know there will be punishment. Enforcing laws and charging Trump is a deterrent to future politicians that believe laws don’t apply to them. No one should be above the law.

The laws Trump allegedly broke of trying to overthrow a legitimate election and stealing government documents are serious. It is outrageous for someone to steal plans for a US invasion of Iran, store them in the bathroom of his private residence and not be charged. Certainly, rape is serious and must be punished.

Our financial system and banks are based on integrity. Judge Arthur Endoran wrote in his decision finding the Trumps guilty, “The frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience. Their (the Trumps) complete lack of contrition and remorse borders on pathological. Instead, they adopt a ‘See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’ posture that the evidence belies.”  Further, he wrote, “The defendants, (Donald Trump and his two adult sons) are incapable of admitting the error of their ways.” Clearly, all these cases had to be prosecuted.

There is a pattern with Donald Trump. Trump was forced to shut down his charity because of fraud. He also had to shut down and pay restitution to people that got bilked by his fraudulent Trump University.

Sometimes we need to look at the obvious reason Trump is being charged so frequently. He is a liar, he is crooked, he is a fraud and he only cares about himself. There is no conspiracy here, just an extremely flawed individual.

Poor Trump

Trump’s comparing himself to Jesus Christ and claiming he is being “literally” crucified to spare the rest of us the same fate from a runaway Deep State is ridiculous. If I wasn’t raised in a rural area, I would never believe there are people stupid enough to believe this. (Note: This is oddly a bloodless crucifixion.)

If any of us put on a court room circus like Trump got away with, we would be sitting in jail. Trump’s multi-$million lawyers gave him every advantage possible in his trials. Yet, he lost every case so far.

Further, Mr. Macho Man Trump didn’t testify under oath in his rape and hush money trials. Trump’s style is to cry, whine and lie outside the courtroom where there is no cross examination.

President Richard Nixon famously stated, “People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook”. If Trump wanted to prove his innocence in the 2020 election interference and the document stealing cases, he would have dispensed with all his delay tactics and gone to court to prove his innocence.

Wrapping-up

Facts are terrible things for Donald Trump and his lemmings. The facts are:

• Trump was the weakest, in general election polling, of the three major Republican candidates. Democrats had no political incentive to put Trump in jail.
• All of Trump’s trials and convictions were the result of facts, not a witch hunt.
• Merrick Garland sat for almost two years before starting any investigation of Trump. If there was a Biden/Justice Department vendetta to ruin Trump’s presidential candidacy, it is the most screwed up vendetta in history.
• Garland passed up the chance to prosecute Trump for a number of other crimes Trump committed.
• Trump has not been investigated or persecuted more than any other presidential or vice-presidential candidate. The reason Trump has been charged and convicted of more crimes than any other candidate is that Trump committed more crimes than any other presidential or vice-presidential candidate.
• Rather than blaming others for his legal problems, Trump (and his supporters) need to recognize all of Trump’s legal problems could have been avoided if he hadn’t:
  • Forced his fingers into E. Jean Carroll’s vagina.
  • Lied outrageously about his property values.
  • Didn’t have extra-marital sex with a porn star.
  • Didn’t try to overturn the results of a legitimate election.
  • Didn’t steal government documents.