I know what many of you are going to say. The Washington Post is an unalloyed ethics villain. It has distorted facts and editorialized in news reports. It employs indefensible partisan propagandists like Philip Bump. It even “stood by” Bump’s false reporting when Prof. Turley exposed it.The paper played a substantial role in rigging the 2020 election by deliberately slanting its reporting against then-President Trump and in favor of Joe Biden. It is unquestionably an unethical, biased, partisan news source.

That, however, makes its editorial titled “Donald Trump deserves his day in appeals court” all the more remarkable and praiseworthy. The ridiculous and obviously politically-motivated New York civil case verdict against Trump that originally required him to post an unprecedented $464 million bond in order to appeal it has been mocked and condemned in the conservative media. It should have been, for it is transparent effort to cripple the putative GOP Presidential nominee financially so he is handicapped in his campaign against President Biden. Most of the Trump Deranged, in contrast, have cheered the result. As a certifiable Trump-detesting news organization, however, the Post’s call for fairness and due process for their frequent target carries more weight and persuasive power than any argument appearing in the New York Post, the Washington Free Beacon or Fox News.

Highlights from the editorial:

• “No matter how much one disapproves of Mr. Trump, or wishes that his presidential ambitions fail, every defendant deserves due process, including recourse to appeal. That is true even with former presidents who are as unpopular in a particular jurisdiction as Mr. Trump is in New York — and even in civil cases such as the one in question. Judges and juries err. Seeking appeal should not be effectively impossible, or expensive to the point of imposing vast and irreparable harm, particularly when a defendant has a colorable argument before appellate judges, as Mr. Trump appears to have.”

• “The original price of appeal in this case was massive. Mr. Trump’s lawyers claimed last week that they tried to get 30 different insurance companies to post a sufficient bond, but none would accept real estate as collateral…. Liquidating properties to free up money cannot happen overnight. Forcing a quick asset offload, even just to pay collateral or fees, can create a fire-sale situation in which sellers get less money than their property is worth. If Ms. James seized his assets, and the appeals court subsequently cut or eliminated Mr. Trump’s penalty, the damage would be irreversible; the price to repurchase prized properties would likely end up higher than what he sold them for, if they were even available.’

• “..No doubt, the appeals process can be abused; in the federal criminal cases against him, Mr. Trump is hoping he can drag out trials until after November’s election and, if he wins the presidency again, order the Justice Department to drop the charges against him…. Mr. Trump’s New York properties will still be there after he exhausts the appeals process, and the money is not for restitution to pay crime victims. Though Mr. Trump was found liable for misstating the values of his properties and other assets by up to $2.2 billion a year from 2011 to 2021, he paid back the loans in question.”

• “Even if none of that were true, though, no defendant should face an appeals process as forbidding as the one Mr. Trump faced…. Whatever else this chapter in the Trump legal drama shows, it is that New York should revisit its laws on how much a person or entity must put up pending appeal for a civil judgment.”

• “Mr. Trump might eventually be forced to pay the full judgment. In the meantime, allowing him to exhaust his legal options without pushing him toward bankruptcy is the fair and correct outcome — as it would be for any other American in the same situation.”

For a member in good standing of the Axis dedicated to bringing Trump to defeat and ruin by any means possible, conceding that Donald Trump deserves the same basic rights and due process of any other American is a major concession. Frankly, I didn’t think the Washington Post was still capable of fairness when Trump is involved.