Donald Trump is guilty! And so is John Roberts!
Alvin Bragg is brave; John Roberts is not.
As you’ve probably heard, former President Donald Trump has just been convicted of 34 counts of, basically, being Donald Trump. It’s “amusing” to listen to all the “experts” explaining why, after having said that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against the Donald was a hot mess, are now trying to put all the blame on Donnie’s lawyers. They screwed up! They screwed up so bad! Well, you know, I think Donnie screwed up too! And, remarkably enough, this time he got caught! In court!
“Even” Politico’s Ankush Khardori, a former prosecutor for the U.S. Department of Justice, who is calmer than most—because he acknowledges that a “guilty” verdict was “reasonable” (my word) if not inevitable—insists on putting the blame primarily on Trump’s lawyers. The point that Khardori wants to emphasize is that the “big” question the jury had to decide was whether to accept the word of “flawed” (again, my word) witness Michael Cohen that Trump knew that the supposedly innocuous payments from Trump, Inc. going to Cohen were really intended to reimburse him for the hush money Mike paid to the notorious Stormy Daniels. But instead of just hammering on that issue—demanding that the jury recognize that there had to be “reasonable doubt” as to whether Cohen was telling the truth, because he clearly had it in for Donnie and also had a long history of lying, Trump’s defense instead wasted its time—and damaged its credibility—by denying “everything”, including the whole Trump/Stormy liaison from the get-go.
But, you know, Ankush, speaking as someone who never finished law school, isn’t it possible that Trump’s lawyers mounted such sweeping defense because they feared—and, as it turned out, feared correctly—that the jury would find Cohen’s testimony credible—credible beyond a reasonable doubt—perhaps because Trump was such a lying sleazebag who couldn’t be trusted to tell the truth about anything as to make even Michael Cohen look honest?
It is worth pointing out that this has no signs of being a “compromise”, or “controversial” verdict. It was decided quickly, with Trump convicted on all 34 counts—no 10 counts “guilty”, 10 counts “not guilty”, and 4 counts “hung”. Maybe a “perfect” defense could have gotten Trump off, if only with a hung jury. But maybe Trump was convicted of all 34 counts because he was guilty of all 34 counts. And maybe all this happened because Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg didn’t wait for “someone else” to take care of Trump for us, unlike the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States! Maybe Alvin Bragg stepped up to the bar and did the job all by himself! And maybe all of us are in his debt.
Afterwords—John Roberts is as guilty as Donald Trump
I have already complained bitterly about John Roberts’ criminal evasion of his constitutional duty in the abysmal, and already almost forgotten Supreme Court case, Trump v. Anderson, in which Chief Justice Roberts cast the deciding vote against performing his, and the Court’s, constitutional duty of ruling on the issue of whether the Fourteenth Amendment’s provision stating that no one should be allowed to hold federal office who “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof” should be applied to one Donald Trump. You can read more authoritatively legal demolitions of the Court’s “reasoning”—aka cowardice, hypocrisy, and, indeed, outright embrace of crime (the crime of insurrection, to be precise)—from George Mason University of Law Professor Ilya Somin and Michael Rappaport, Director, Center for the Study of Constitutional Originalism at the University of San Diego.
Roberts is Chief Justice, not merely of the U.S. Supreme Court, but the entire federal judicial system—that is to say, all the federal district courts (94 district courts, staffed by a total of 677 judges, and 13 circuit courts of appeal, staffed by a total of 179 appellate court judges). What Roberts has told the American system of justice is that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t apply to Donald Trump. Thank God Alvin Bragg wasn’t listening.
Donald Trump will be remembered as the biggest criminal in American history. And Chief Justice Roberts will be remembered as its greatest coward.