There are so, so many reasons a Donald Trump victory over Kamala Harris is essential to restoring justice, ethics and a healthy democracy to this nation. It is a tragedy, or perhaps a cosmic joke, that none of those reasons have very much to do with the desirability of having Trump as President for four years. Never mind: what has been going on in the U.S. under the false justification of innate Leftist superiority is frightening, pernicious, and has to be stopped, which includes appropriate punishment.
One of those reasons the Axis must pay is its use of the legal system to harass, hobble, and if possible to jail Donald Trump. The conviction for—well, something—in the rigged Manhattan trial is certain to be overturned on so many grounds it’s like a 1L law school exam, but the case still has given Democrats the chance to describe Trump as “a convicted felon.” The dubious sexual assault case against him (which only proceeded because New York suspended the statute of limitations so Trump could be “got”) let them call the Republican Presidential nominee an “adjudicated rapist” after another politically motivated trial. Then we have the Fani Willis Follies in Georgia, where a prosecution against Trump was derailed because an incompetent and and corrupt D.A. used the case to get her lover on the Fulton County payroll. There are a couple more dominoes to fall in the disgusting “warfare” campaign against Trump, but as long as he loses in November Harry Reid will be high-fiving in Hell, because like Reid’s lie that Mitt Romney paid no taxes, the unethical strategy “worked.”
Another domino seems to be wobbling before the election. This week the New York appeals court was dubious about the legitimacy of the civil judgment of more than $450 million that a Democrat trial judge had ordered Trump to pay after ruling that he had inflated his wealth to lenders.
A five-judge panel seemed to feel, as one member said, that “the immense penalty in this case is troubling.” (Ya think?) New York’s deputy solicitor general, arguing for the state (and its openly “Get Trump” Attorney General Letitia James, was asked identify any other case in which the attorney general’s office had sued “to upset a private business transaction that was between equally sophisticated partners that had “little to no impact on the public marketplace.” If one wades through the resulting “humina-humina” response, the answer is “No.” But after all, this was Donald Trump, and he had to be stopped: the President said so.
This was, I surmise, what the justices were referring to when they suggested in the hearing that the case and the excessive damages levied were “mission creep” by the attorney general’s office.
You know what that “mission” is.
And to a large extent, the mission has been accomplished. The Democratic Party’s lawfare, bolstered by its indispensable Axis ally the news media, has robbed the former President of resources, time, and public trust. It also has been emulating the tactics of totalitarian regimes. The American public is unworthy of its legacy of democratic principles if it tolerates and ratifies this by allowing such a strategy to succeed.
Ethics Alarms 
Sometimes it’s amazing how discussions can randomly overlap from one blog to another. In the same blog post I linked to yesterday, this became part of the discussion this morning…
I don’t know if the blogger (Dave Cieslewicz) will publish my comment that’s awaiting moderation. He published the ones I submitted yesterday in the same comment thread but I sent him a personal email asking him to publish them.
In case he doesn’t post it, this was my reply (before I saw this blog post of Jack’s):
“These were not political show trials…“
Seriously?
Do hyper-partisan 90% democrat big city DAs run on platforms promising to “get” private citizens, and then change and pervert the law to charge misdemeanor disputed bookkeeping offenses (similar to those done previously by prominent democrat candidates) as felonies?
Do democrat prosecutors comb through private citizens’ real estate loans, and step in to dispute agreed-upon property valuations and charge crimes, when no one has claimed injury and both lender and borrower were satisfied with the terms and repayment of the loans?
Was it not democrats who tried to get Trump kicked off ballots (as an “insurrectionist”) in several states (rejected 9-0 by SCOTUS)? Was it a Republican administration that decided to prosecute one Republican ex-president for retaining documents, but decline to do so against a former democrat senator who never had the authority to possess or retain such records?
Etc., etc….
I regard the claim that these trials were not politically motivated in the same category as the “the news media isn’t biased” position. Either the individual is biased, Trump Deranged, lying, blind, gullible or stupid.
Who says they can’t be all those things, if they wish?
In any case, even if he does post or answer the comment, I doubt I’ll pursue it any further. Can absolutely find something more productive to do, or at least a different dead horse to beat, somewhere.
Facts are stubborn things.
PWS
I’ve actually got two comments awaiting moderation in that thread, the other one is just below the one shown above and refers readers back to this blog post of Jacks.
I don’t think we’re going to see the rest of our comments posted by Cieslewicz, why I don’t really know.
“I don’t think we’re going to see the rest of our comments posted by Cieslewicz, why I don’t really know.”
Really too bad he chose not (thus far) to allow commentary that would have advanced the discussion in a positive manner, but (IMO) here’s why: You painted him into a corner and nailed his spandex-covered keister to the floorboards.
PWS
If you want a really good reason of why Dave moderates all my comments and refuses to publish nearly all of them now, here is a prime example. That was one of the comment threads that was just a few days prior to me getting de facto banned and all of my comments went straight into moderation, he wouldn’t come straight out and tell me that I was banned. People can make up their own mind as to his motivation.
I would ban someone that dishonest as a commenter; I certainly wouldn’t waste time arguing with him on his blog.
I had no idea this guy was an ex-politician until someone mentioned “mayor bike shorts”, and I included that phrase with his name in a search.
hecking a few of his other posts, it oddly looks like he occasionally takes what seems to be a rational “non-leftist” point of view (e.g., https://yellowstripsdeadarmadillos.org/2024/09/24/a-radical-idea-ignore-race/ . He also had one denouncing administrative bloat driving up the costs of college.
Maybe he’a an education conservative with TDS?
Remember the old adage, even a broken clock can be “right” twice a day. 😉 😉 😉
Seriously, there are times that I completely agree with Cieslewicz and I’ve told him so, unfortunately in some cases it’s been in comments that he refuses to publish. In one comment about CRT I wrote “This is an outstanding blog post!!!” which he published but he then refused to publish a follow up comment where I talked about “The 21st Century’s Bastardization of ‘I Have A Dream’ “.
There are other times where my comment would start with the word “Hogwash” and then I would proceed to explain why I thought it was hogwash – Dave sometimes likes to ignore reality and paint Republicans with a really, Really wide brush of bigotry.
Cieslewicz’s blog is a local blog for me so I like to keep up with it routinely. Cieslewicz is actually a really nice guy. Even though him and I disagree politically sometimes and sometimes that disagreement is stringent, I think he’s a decent person who want’s many similar things as I but happens to be a bit misguided as to how to accomplish those goals. In addition; him and I are both involved in a cross-partisan organization called the Wisconsin Alliance for Civic Trust and our paths personally cross once in a while with that involvement, in fact I personally invited him to join the organization. When one of the organization Co-Leads asked me about becoming one of the Regional Directors, I declined the offer and suggested that they offer the position to Cieslewicz who was much more suited for the position than I. As far as I’m concerned, my “relationship” (if that’s what you want to call it) with Cieslewicz is a rough and rocky road that is completely repairable, I have a level of respect for the man but that doesn’t stop me from voicing my opinion when we’re in disagreement.
VERY (IMO) accurately and diplomatically put, Steve!
PWS
Well, he did finally respond, though with attempts to deflect and move the goalposts:
“William, you can’t be serious. You can’t honestly believe that Donald Trump does not cheat at business and abuse women. The evidence is clear that he tried to steal the last election — he’s caught on tape doing it in Georgia. As to his felony convictions I actually agree that those charges related to his Stormy Daniels payoff were relatively penny ante compared to his other crimes. But regardless of that, the guy paid off a porn star and then tried to cover it up — not exactly the behavior I want in a president. And as for selective prosecution, do you really think that Hunter Biden wouldn’t have been able to negotiate a plea deal if he weren’t Biden’s son?“
The issue of course, is not whether Trump is a nice guy (many of us obviously don’t like much of his behavior), but that democrats are using unprecedented lawfare against Trump in their deep-blue strongholds. Georgia (specifically blue Atlanta/Fulton county, where the case is falling apart due to yet another dishonest democrat DA) is simply another example. It’s a subjective stretch to assume saying “find votes” is the same as “manufacture fake vote”. And yes, though it’s a deflection, I think no one else would have received all the breaks Hunter did…Letting statutes of limitations run out on high-dollar tax charges, cutting a sweetheart deal on others (that got caught out by an observant judge)…Having the FBI sit on, lie about, and run interference on, the laptop story with MSM and social media companies… SecServ agents showing up at a firearms dealer and attempting to disappear the firearm purchase record, etc., etc.
Still don’t know whether it’s worth replying if it’s just going to generate that sort of lame response. I’ll have to think about it.
Re: “Nice guy Trump?” …Something of an aside, that I’m sort of surprised hasn’t been mentioned by anyone here:
Trump actually showed up in one of the guest chairs for the entire show on a recent Gutfeld! episode. He was engaging and even amusingly self-deprecating. He seemed like a guy you would enjoy having lunch with. If he would act like that most of the time, he would probably be doing a lot better with the public.
Willem Reese wrote, “Still don’t know whether it’s worth replying if it’s just going to generate that sort of lame response. I’ll have to think about it.”
After he wrote this, “The evidence is clear that he tried to steal the last election — he’s caught on tape doing it in Georgia.” it’s clear that he has an overwhelming preconceived anti-Trump bias and there’s nothing you can say and no fact that you can present that’s going to change that biased opinion.
I have an Army buddy (happens to be black) that I’ve known for over 30 years that once told me just before he unfriended me and now refuses to communicate with me that he “will never believe that Trump is not a racist”. I’m wondering now if our conversations regarding logic over emotion in politics that led him to that kind of reaction were worth it.
If it were me, I think I’d let it go.
There’s always tomorrow.
Saying that Trump’s completely ambiguous statement that “you have to find’ the votes is “clear” evidence of anything comes from the same kind of addled mind that claims when Trump said to “fight” in his January 6 speech he meant physically fight. (But when Schumer warned the SCOTUS justices, it was just rhetoric. It’s not worth the time and effort to debate with people like that.
Dave C. cannot possibly have even a glancing awareness of the various lawfare persecutions Trump has been put through.
As demonstrated by: Do you really think that Trump should be exempt from prosecution for breaking laws that average Americans would be prosecuted for?
Seriously?
Why not? Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden are!
The alleged victim testified for the defense.
I can’t believe half the country is just fine with what’s going on. It can’t just be explained by Trump having come from outside the ranks of professional political grifters, er, politicians. I’m convinced this is the new Democrat party and will be its campaign strategy going forward against more conventional candidates. Every Republican will be an existential threat to democracy and an aspiring dictator. See, e.g., J.D. Vance’s treatment.
What we’re seeing is the culmination of the professionalization of political campaigns by hired consultants and political science majors over the last forty years. It’s win at any cost, and it’s been visited upon us by the left.
Well now I’m curious and you have my attention!
Do you think Trump is guilty of committing any crimes he’s been charged or convicted of?
DD
Deflection; that’s not really the point here.
I think it matters, which is why I’m asking.
Thoughts?
DD
That depends on you being able to list the crime, in detail and explain how he is guilty, since that whole pesky, innocent until proven guilty thingie.
Denver Dave wrote, “Do you think Trump is guilty of committing any crimes he’s been charged or convicted of?”
Then Denver Dave wrote, “I think it matters, which is why I’m asking.”
Let me get this correct…
Denver Dave seems to think that what the author of this blog thinks about Trump’s guilt or innocence is more important than the content of the authors blog in regards to the issues raised? Not a single word about the blog contents?
Denver Dave, maybe you don’t realize it but trying to deflect the conversation into a conversation about the blogger instead of the content of the blog is a form of trolling, it doesn’t matter how smoothly you’re able to layout the deflection.
You better come up with real content or you won’t last around here.
Well, Dave, Let’s make this a little less inflammatory. Eric Adams is about to be destroyed by the justice system. Do I think he committed the crimes he is accused of? I think there is a reasonable chance that yes he did. Would he have EVER been charged with these if he hadn’t been criticizing the administration for the border crisis? No, he wouldn’t.
You don’t have to be innocent for it to be a political prosecution. It just has to be the reason for the prosecution.
As for Trump, I think the business ‘fraud’ case and the classified documents case were the most blatant political prosecutions.
In the business fraud case, the state of New York decided to prosecute Trump for fraud because he estimated the value of his properties at a higher value than the bank was willing to loan him. The bank refused to use his estimate and used their own. He got the loan on the bank’s terms and he repaid it. The bank had no problem. How is that fraud? This is like listing your car for sale at $24,000 and you sold it for $20,000? Were you trying to defraud people with the initial value? You agreed to sell it for $20,000, so you obviously didn’t REALLY think it was $24,000. In an outrageous point of hypocrisy, the court valued Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property at about 10% the bank’s value and valued it at less than a smaller VACANT LOT that sold nearby. This is obvious political prosecution. What business does the state have inserting itself into private business deals after the fact, deciding that the deal maybe wasn’t fair somehow, and then demanding a $500 million fine be paid TO THE STATE!
Have you ever sold a house or sold or traded-in a car for less than you first asked? Do you think you should have to pay a 10x fine to the state for that? Remember, if you lower the price on anything, it is now criminal fraud…or this was a political prosecution.
In the documents case, it is much worse. Trump requested documents from the Archives. The National Archives vetted the documents, packaged them, and then told Trump’s team to come get them. The FBI went to Mar-a-Lago and inspected the documents. They said they wanted a better lock on the door, and Trump complied.
After that, the FBI
-Engaged in a raid with SWAT team, with plans to shoot Trump’s Secret Service members
-Demanded that the security cameras be turned off so there would be no record of what they did.
-They brought cover sheets with classified warnings on them, stapled them to random documents, scattered them on the floor, and photographed them for ‘illustration purposes’.
-They purposely renumbered the files. This was so it would appear that Trump had opened the ‘supersecret’ files the FBI was worried about, the ones the Archives told them that they put in the boxes and allowed Trump to take. It seems that all the ‘secret’ files the FBI was ‘worried’ about were still sealed in the boxes. Trump never saw them.
In addition, Trump claimed that he had a standing order that all files he transferred to Mar-a-Lago were automatically declassified. The National Archivist has stated that SHE, not the President has declassification power and that Trump has to go through her. That is not a criminal matter, that is a Constitutional matter for the Supreme Court to decide or the President to just fire the Archivist for such an unconstitutional power grab.
Let’s compare this to Obama. When Obama left the White House, the FBI installed a safe in his residence to keep the classified documents that he had. Nobody questioned what he took.
Let’s compare this to Joe Biden, a man with no declassification power. He had a similar number of pages of classified documents as Trump is accused of having (they could all be declassified, that hasn’t been determined). He had them stored in unlocked closets in public places around the country and in cardboard boxes in a garage being rented by a drug user with a dishonorable discharge from the military. He wasn’t charged.
Let’s compare this to Hillary Clinton who had her staff e-mail unencrypted classified documents that were intercepted by criminal and intelligence agencies around the world. About a dozen informants in Iran were killed when she revealed their identities this way. She even e-mailed the minutes of current NSA briefings. She was not charged because you can’t ‘prove she meant to do that’.
So Dave, there seems to be quite a lot of evidence that these are political prosecutions.
As another gauge of political prosecutions, let’s look at how many 1sts there are.
This is the first time a state inserted itself into a business deal to prosecute someone for fraud when neither party claimed there was fraud.
This is the first time a state eliminated the statue-of-limitations so that a person could sue another person. When that same law was applied to others (including one of the sponsors of the bill).
This is the first time a former president has been charged with a crime .
This is the first time a former president has been charged for retaining classified documents (when all previous ones have).
I would also add that this is probably the first time anyone has ever been found guilty of defamation for claiming that they didn’t commit a crime of which they had been acquitted (well, in civil court, but civil and criminal have been muddled in this).
This is the first time that a state attorney general ran on a platform of convicting a former president of whatever crime they could concoct (she didn’t have a crime specified when running).
This is the first time that a politician has been prosecuted in multiple cases while running for president.
This is the first time (that I know of) that a politician has been prosecuted in state court and high-ranking officials of the opposing parties have quit their jobs to take part in the prosecution.
This is also the first time I have heard of someone being declared guilty by the judge and THEN tried.
So, to claim that these prosecutions AREN’T political, you have to look at all that and claim it is ‘just coincidence’.
No, because the indictment was legally insufficient.
Denver Dave wrote, “Do you think Trump is guilty of committing any crimes he’s been charged or convicted of?”
Denver Dave,
How about you be very specific and identify these “crimes” you’re talking about, then maybe the commentariat here at Ethics Alarms can turn your transparent “gotcha” worded deflection into an intelligent discussion.
Your choice; but always remember, all choices have consequences.
Choose.
By the way Denver Dave, the question you asked that I cherry picked out of your comment is the same kind of transparent “gotcha” question that Dave Cieslewicz asked in the comment I shared above, “Do you really think that Trump should be exempt from prosecution for breaking laws that average Americans would be prosecuted for?”
Come on Dave, I think you can do better than this or am I wrong?
Let’s have a real conversation, not this “gotcha” nonsense. If you’re up to it, there are lots of intelligent people around here to converse with.
Choose.