It’s early yet, and things could change, and yes, polls, but…
Observations:
1. The main thing this tells me is that the mainstream media has finally done it: almost nobody pays any serious attention to them or their reporting and “analysis.” Almost all of the media was openly rooting for a Trump conviction, and slanting its reporting on the trial as much as possible, even to the extent of making a big deal over Trump nodding off and reputedly “passing gas.” When the verdict came down, the glee from pundits like Maureen Dowd and the jackals at MSNBC was so clearly unprofessional and personal.
2. Close behind, and perhaps even more ominous for the future, is that the justice system has lost a critical mass of credibility and trust as well. I haven’t given it sufficient thought yet, but right now I’d trace the slippery slope to perdition thusly: the Rodney King case, the O.J. verdict, the Bill Clinton whitewash, the Zimmerman verdict (after President Obama essentially pronounced him guilty of murder), Hillary Clinton’s avoidance of any prosecution as a result of her “secret server” games, the Russian Collusion hoax, the George Floyd trials, the failure to prosecute the BLM rioters, Bill Cosby’s botched prosecution, the political trials of the January 6 rioters, and now the “Get Trump!” conspiracy by Democratic D.As and prosecutors.
And how do we claw our way back up that slope? Well, electing Trump won’t do it. But letting the Democrats keep power will only make the problem worse.
2. Lincoln again has been proven right. You can’t fool all of the people all of the time, or even enough of the people to get away with behaving like the Soviet Union. The public knows these are political prosecutions. It doesn’t like seeing its country behaving like the proverbial “banana republic,” a term that I’m sure will be declared racist any minute now.
3. The Axis—“the resistance”/Democrats/ and the MSM—will only panic worse now, and they were already waaaay into the red zone. What will they try next, if these numbers hold, or even tilt Trump’s way further, as I expect they will? The Axis is capable of doing and saying anything now; think of a cornered honey badger, or, say, Michael Cohen. Anything. I’m not exaggerating.
4. That the Democrats would even consider this extreme “Get Trump!” strategy tells us not only that they are ruthless and willing to emulate totalitarians for “the greater good,” but that they are also too stupid, driven by emotion and incompetent to trust to dress themselves, never mind make effective national policy.
5. Let us not neglect to ponder the disturbing cultural significance of a major political figure being accused and convicted of crimes, justly or not, having virtually no affect on his popularity. Where are the values on this nation going?
No place that I’m comfortable with…
Ethics Alarms 
Do you think they might stoop to assassination?
I have no doubt about it. The attempt to remove his Secret Service protection is a step in that direction.
Would they be foolish enough to do so?
I don’t get how #5 follows.
A large component of people who support Trump also recognize that this was an unjust trial and conviction.
So why would that lower his popularity?
I would be worried about our values if it popularity stayed stable if he actually committed a crime.
What’s more concerning is how leftist support of what the democrat machine has done to political opponents hasn’t caused their support to waver.
Oh, I have no doubt that Trump has committed crimes, just as Clinton, Hillary, Biden, Nixon, JFK, Truman, FDR, LBJ and other Presidents have committed crimes. if you are rich, powerful, active , a risk-taker and a leader, the odds are that you have committed crimes. It’s best that the public cares about that when the crimes are revealed.
Just another great argument for repealing a bunch of criminal statutes, or granting presidents a significant (but not massive) measure of immunity from criminal prosecution for actions during their term.
Correction: I failed to embrace the healing power of “and” in the above.
What crime was revealed?
Nothing that I saw in the Manhattan trial. Trump stupidly refused to return the classified docs when he was asked for them, and that escalated the putative illegal conduct. Revealed is the key word: from my experience, it’s impossible to be in the construction business and hotel business without engaging in kick-backs and other illegal maneuvers. Literally impossible. Of course Trump also engaged in sexual assault by the strict definition. Like about 2,000 other celebrities and rich guys I could name, including, obviously, Joe Biden and Bill Clinton. (And George Bush I. And Ronald Reagan…)
“Of course Trump also engaged in sexual assault by the strict definition.”
This assumes that you believe E Jean Carrol. The same woman who never made a claim until 30 years later, could not remember when it happened, nor could those who claimed she told them at the time and who flirted with Anderson Cooper telling him most people consider “rape sexy”. And who, in another interview after the verdict talked about taking the interviewer shopping.
Trump’s playboy persona of the 80’s and 90’s was well known to us Boomers and many women would have loved to be with him. If you believe Melania would have dated him had he been Joe the plumber I have a bridge to sell. (the Key Bridge)
Is it possible Carrol is telling the truth? Yes it is possible but it is also equally likely that she saw a potential big pay by leveling an accusation that required the accused be able to provide countervailing evidence of his whereabouts on an unknown day in an unknown year. Remember that this case could not have been brought had the New York legislature passed the “lookback” law that extended the statute of limitations for one year. This law was lobbied for by the same person that laundered a contribution to her legal team through a non profit that offset some of her upfront attorney’s fees, and hates Trump – Reid Hoffman the Linked In billionaire.
Carrol accused Trump of rape but the Manhattan civil jury decided that she as not raped but simply assaulted. This tells me that they could believe he assaulted her because of his reputation but the evidence as not there to support the rape charge. Reputation is not evidence and Manhattan’s liberal elites hate Trump. Had I been on the jury knowing only that which has been reported I would have found in his favor.
Had I been on the jury knowing only that which has been reported I would have found in his favor.
E. Jean Carroll waited thirty years.
Did Elizabeth Smart wait thirty years?
No, it has nothing to do with Jean. I’ve SEEN sexual assault by rich, powerful, young, famous, attractive men—and some women—too many times to count. It’s unconsented-to touching in a sexual manner, but they are used to doing it and getting away with it, so they keep doing it.That’s what Trump was talking about, in a crude way, on “Access Hollywood’s” set. That was the point I was making on NPR about sexual harassment when they shut me down
Every person in this country has committed some offense. Just drive on any major thoroughfare and you will witness a litany of offenders. Even those who claim to walk the straight and narrow probably have violated something given the vast number of rules that are on the books.
The idea that rich powerful people commit crimes because they can advances the indictment on our judicial system. Rich and powerful people rely on lawyers to keep them from violating the law. Any lawyer that is coerced by a client to provide a false legal opinion has no business in the profession.
Prosecutorial discretion is essential to sending the right messages and to making the system work. Weaponizing prosecutorial discretion to advance a particular party, leader or agenda poisons democracy, public trust and the rule of law.
Jack, I wrote about prosecutorial discretion several posts ago. I fully understand its importance. Not every infraction deserves prosecution simply from an economic perspective. Crimes that pose an immediate danger to the health and safety of the public must take precedence. However, when we see roughly equivalent crimes go unpunished because it advances a political narrative while the opposition is hunted down like terrorists the concept of discretion loses value unless the prosecutor can articulate its reasoning. A simple review of cases that get dismissed or null processed in certain area seem to disregard that construct.
Another factor at play is what gives a prosecutor reasonable suspicion to investigate wrongdoing which could lead to indictment. If a prosecutor only investigates those it has political disagreement prosecutorial discretion is not a valid excuse. Further, and to say, as do many do, “there is no evidence of wrongdoing” on the part of x is invalid as an argument if the same investigative process does not occur or the evaluation of evidence that leads to a decision to charge or not is materially different.
The only thing that I can see is that some are targets while others skate.
Here is a point Andrew McCarthy made.
https://archive.md/Ldcu4
What I’m talking about here, though, is more basic. Trump says Democrats “rigged” the 2020 election against him by, for example, suppressing unsavory information about Biden-family influence-peddling. That’s exactly Bragg’s theory of how Trump supposedly stole 2016 — information suppression. Trump’s refusal to accept the outcome of the 2020 election is fairly highlighted by Democrats as making him singularly unfit for the presidency; Bragg’s refusal to accept the outcome of the 2016 election has made him a Democratic hero.
And if we’re going to talk 2016 election, Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton, actually was found by the FEC to have violated federal campaign law. In stoking the fraudulent claim that Trump was a clandestine agent of the Kremlin, Clinton’s campaign paid its law firm, Perkins Coie, to hire Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele to concoct the story; then it booked the payment as legal expenses rather than opposition research. As a result, the FEC fined the Clinton campaign.
Since Bragg theorizes that Trump, in the same campaign, falsely booked payments as legal expenses rather than reimbursement for a nondisclosure deal, why hasn’t Bragg indicted Clinton? Don’t get me wrong, he doesn’t really have a case against Clinton, either — but at least Clinton, unlike Trump, was found by an authorized federal agency to have committed an actionable disclosure violation.
Of course, the question answers itself: Clinton is a Democrat. Bragg sees his job not as enforcing the law evenhandedly but as getting Trump.
But understand: What Bragg is accusing Trump of is stealing the 2016 election.
That’s an important quote from McCarthy’s article and thanks for publishing it. I’ll do the same in a full post later, and give you a pointer.
Part of me wonders how Banned Bob would deny this, but the other part, the rational one, doesn’t give a crap…
I’m a retired newspaper publisher (I once owned 5 newspapers in California). Journalism isn’t dead, and true journalism (reporting that gives the facts with little opinion) still exists in a few places. What we are witnessing today is the future of journalism which is more partisan and supported by more diverse revenue streams—in other words, like the journalism of 200 years ago. Journalism history is not a popular subject. But looking back at newspapers and journals published at the beginning of our Republic — well, it wasn’t very pretty — in fact, it was down right scandalous.
That’s an important point: when the Founders were extolling what they thought of as journalism, it was really mostly partisan advocacy. An argument can be made that we’ve never had an abundance of objective, non-biased journalism, but what we are seeing now is clearly a regression.
Close behind, and perhaps even more ominous for the future, is that the justice system has lost a critical mass of credibility and trust as well. I haven’t given it sufficient thought yet, but right now I’d trace the slippery slope to perdition thusly: the Rodney King case, the O.J. verdict, the Bill Clinton whitewash, the Zimmerman verdict (after President Obama essentially pronounced him guilty of murder), Hillary Clinton’s avoidance of any prosecution as a result of her “secret server” games, the Russian Collusion hoax, the George Floyd trials, the failure to prosecute the BLM rioters, Bill Cosby’s botched prosecution, the political trials of the January 6 rioters, and now the “Get Trump!” conspiracy by Democratic D.As and prosecutors.
You also wrote about other unethical prosecutors in the past.
Here was one of the cases.
https://ethicsalarms.com/2019/08/30/from-the-ethics-alarms-i-dont-understand-this-at-all-files-the-persecution-of-curtis-flowers/
You can actually read my comments on that post.
Has Doug Evans been held accountable?
Well, electing Trump won’t do it.
It will take a humiliating defeat of thosde who changed the rules, to gwt the old rules back, to get our land of tolerance and land of peace back.
Where are the values on this nation going?
A nation justly skeptical of courts?