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Donald Trump didn’t lose on Thursday. Our once-respected justice system lost. And by extension, every American lost something precious. Because a failure of the justice system is a failure of the people.
The former president’s conviction in the Manhattan courtroom was preordained. The merciless verdict rendered the ideal of a fair trial and an impartial jury a figment of the Founding Fathers’ imagination. They knew that the worst oppression was by color of law. They feared it and tried to prevent it. So they, too, lost.
Reversing the verdict on appeal will not erase the ugly stain. It will not go away. Ethical integrity, equal justice, and the respected rule of law were the fatal casualties of this attack on freedom. No real crime was found; the prosecution simply invented one — an undefined conspiracy, practically impossible, and supported nowhere in the criminal law.
Trump found guilty on all charges in New York criminal trial
The trial itself, five painful weeks long, seemed a mere formality, an empty ritual: an entry on the books magically transformed from an untimely misdemeanor into an ongoing felony, like a porcupine transforming into a prince.
At trial, the defendant was never informed of the criminal acts he was alleged to have committed, a flagrant violation of his Sixth Amendment rights. The jury was then creatively presented with three possibilities and told that our cherished constitutional principle of unanimity was extinct. We still don’t know, and we probably never will know, what Trump’s conspiracy was.
The tragic outcome of the Trump trial is that Americans can no longer trust our justice system. Trust has been squandered.
District Attorney Alvin Bragg proves that the English philosopher and jurist Jeremy Bentham was right when he said, “The law is never wrong in itself; there are always evil interpreters who have misused and abused it.”
But Bragg did not act alone. His co-defendant and co-prosecutor, Judge Juan Marchan, engineered a wrongful conviction by blithely ignoring established rules of evidence, manipulating the standard of evidence in the prosecutors’ favor, authorizing prejudicial testimony that had no probative value, and depriving Trump of a full and reasonable defense to which he was entitled. Judge Marchan did all of this without conscience or remorse.
Trump says guilty verdict is a ‘scar’ on New York’s justice system, vows to ‘keep fighting’
There was never plausible evidence that Trump committed a crime. There was no legal basis for the charges. Facts were fabricated or exaggerated. Statutes were perverted or ignored. Law enforcement officers became lawbreakers. Bragg’s scheme to use a pathological liar and convicted perjury as his main witness was the machinations of a crooked prosecutor.
Cohen lied to the jury just as he lied to everyone else. Not surprising coming from a man who told Congress, “I lied, but I’m not a liar.” This is the twisted syllogism of an insufferable scoundrel.
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The problem with liars is that the truth has no meaning to them. They can’t distinguish fantasy from reality. They lie to themselves about their own lies. But that didn’t stop Bragg and his cohorts from using Cohen’s skills as an expert liar in their relentless quest to convict Trump.
Did they solicit perjury? Absolutely. They knew Cohen would lie. They wanted him to lie. And he did not disappoint.
Bragg never had the authority to sue for the federal campaign finance violations that appear to be the central element of Trump’s unjust lawsuit, which is why he covered it up until the end. A competent and impartial judge would never have allowed it. Marchan was neither.
The tragic outcome of the Trump trial is that Americans can no longer trust our justice system. Trust has been squandered. If trust can be used as a weapon against a former president, it can happen to anyone. We are all at risk.
When powerful district attorneys in government abuse their positions of trust to subvert the legal process and judges work together to strip defendants of their due process rights, our justice system is undermined and respect for the rule of law is eroded.
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It was John Adams who said, “Our government is not of men, but of laws.”
Sadly, it no longer exists.
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