Democrats Wage Groundless Lawfare Against Trump

Trump-mugshot

04-09-2023: It is scarcely an exaggeration to state that the United States of America (US) is in danger of becoming a “banana republic”. The leading contender for the nomination of President for the Republican party in the 2024 elections – Donald Trump – is currently facing four indictments ultimately imposed on behalf of the Democratic party presidential administration of Joe Biden. Even without a thorough investigation, it is plain to see that these four indictments are only “crimes” using the wildest interpretation of legal theory imaginable. Vast numbers of Americans are viewing these attempts to have Trump charged with “offences” as blatantly political, and a not-so-subtle attempt to prevent by far the leading opposition candidate from running in the elections next year. As Trump has only served one term as President (2016-2020), he is constitutionally entitled to serve a second term if elected.

Partisan lawfare

The four indictments levied against Trump are an act of lawfare – the use of legal systems and institutions to damage or delegitimise an opponent, or to deter an individual’s use of their legal rights.[1] The fact that this is being used not by a corporation against some activists, but by one of the major political parties in the US against its rival – threatens at the very least a constitutional crisis if it proceeds. The first indictment stems from the paying of hush money by Trump to adult-film star Stormy Daniels, who alleged the pair had an extra-marital affair prior to 2016. From this stem 34 felony charges (which is actually just the same charge repeated 34 times) for supposedly falsifying business records in order to suppress negative news stories about this issue ahead of the 2016 election.[2] Yet the paying of hush money in itself is not a crime in the US. The prosecution has to somehow prove that the intention of this payment was in relation to the 2016 election, and not for any other reason. Needless to say, it is almost impossible to determine the state of mind of either Trump or his lawyers or accountants at the time this payment was supposedly made.

The second indictment relates to charges that Trump supposedly endangered national security by retaining classified documents and taking them to his residence at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after he left office in 2020. The charges have also been weighed against Carlos De Oliveria, Trump’s manager of the estate.[3] This is despite some evidence that former US President Barack Obama took 33 million pages of documents with him when he left the White House, many of them classified.[4] The notion that Trump engaged in “wilful retention of national defence information”, “corruptly concealing a document or record”, or a “conspiracy to obstruct justice” is beyond anything that can be considered plausible. In addition, as President at the time, it is likely that Donald Trump himself had the power and authority to both classify and de-classify records relating to his administration. It is reasonable to assume that Presidents taking some records and personal effects with them when they leave office is standard practice, rather than some kind of aberration.

The third indictment brought by the Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith relates to a supposed “conspiracy to defraud the United States”, a “conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding” and a count of “conspiracy against rights”.[5] The prosecutors are claiming – absurdly – that Trump attempted to overturn the results of the November 2020 Presidential Election and undermine America’s democracy! This is stretching the outer limits of credibility. For one thing, there is an abundance of evidence of fraudulent practices carried out during the election, even just in the one state of Michigan.[6] For another thing, even if we assume that the election was entirely legitimate (despite volumes of evidence to the contrary) it is of course entirely legal to object to an election count, especially if you were one of the candidates. This has been done many times in US history, and the Democrats themselves have a history of objecting to state and federal election results, especially Hilary Clinton herself and Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.[7]

A fourth indictment has been laid against Trump and 18 others by a grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, in relation to “racketeering” with regard to the dubious loss of Georgia to Joe Biden in the 2020 election. The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations (RICO) Act is invoked, a federal law that penalises the activities of individuals engaging in organised crime.[8] In other words, a law which was first formulated in order to target the Mafia is now being hurled against Trump. This is despite numerous videos surfacing of highly irregular practices taking place by election workers in Georgia during the 2020 election, including the feeding of the same ballots through tabulating machines multiple times,[9] and the pulling of suitcases full of ballots from under tables and running them through machines after telling other observers that counting had stopped for the night.[10]

Election interference

None of this is to validate the politics of Donald Trump or the Republican party, which ultimately provide no solutions for working people at a time of systemic crisis. Yet the fact that the Democrats and the liberal left are remaining silent on what is an overt use of state power for unmasked political ends is more than revealing. To say virtually nothing while the leading opposition candidate in a US Presidential Election is likely being arrested and even jailed on spurious charges exposes them as complicit in one of the most undemocratic manoeuvres ever undertaken. Plus, there is a virtual corporate media blackout on the substantial evidence accumulating of barely concealed corruption of Joe Biden himself and his son Hunter.[11] In addition, evidence has since come to light confirming the suspicion that the Democratic administration of Joe Biden was behind the removal of the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, for his neutral stance towards the NATO proxy war in Ukraine.[12] Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken then broke records for hypocrisy in welcoming “free and fair elections”[13] in Pakistan, while Imran Khan remains in jail![14]

After years of complaining about non-existent election interference by Russia in in the 2016 US Presidential election, the Democrats themselves are now engaging in election interference par excellence – through the attempted jailing of the likely leader of their main opponent party. Yet this plan is backfiring spectacularly, with Trump way out in front in the Republican primary polling. At the end of August, Trump is far and away the most popular with 50.3%. Ron De Santis is the second most popular, but only has 14.8%. Vivek Ramaswamy has 9.2%, Nikki Haley has 5.6% and Mike Pence has 4.4%.[15] In other words, it is no contest. And with each indictment the Democrats register against Trump, his popularity amongst Republican voters seemingly increases even further. When Donald Trump was booked at the Fulton County Jail in Georgia, his mug shot was emblazoned on several pieces of merchandise in an effort to further raise funds for the election campaign. The result was that some 7.1 million dollars was raised within 48 hours.[16]

The Democrats, backed either silently or loudly by the woke left, have used capitalist state power to unjustly prosecute participants in the January 6, 2021 protest in Washington, which was attended but hardly led by Donald Trump. Ludicrously labelled an “insurrection” by a liberal led media, this protest was against what was perceived to be large scale electoral fraud in the November 2020 presidential election – for which there is ample evidence.[17] The central demand for this demonstration was “Stop the Steal” or even the more moderate “Audit the Vote”.[18] However, even if the 2020 election was entirely legitimate with every vote cast validated, people obviously should still have the right to question the results, call for a recount, or protest about what they believe to be the case. This is especially the case for candidates who ran in the election. What is more, all avenues should be open for a legal challenge to the election process, for those who have the resources to do so.

The depths to which the Democrats and the US state have plunged to prevent Donald Trump – or anyone – from even questioning the result of an election are bewildering. The attempted RICO indictment on Trump is also being used to pursue four of Trump’s lawyers on felony charges for heading up a case to persuade officials that the 2020 Election was marred by irregularities and therefore should not be certified.[19] One should be able to see the ramifications for totalitarianism if people are going to be criminalised for questioning election results! In the case of the January 6, 2021 protest, the Democrats have used state power to weigh criminal charges against over 1100 people who attended the protest, or “riot” as the liberal media also name it.[20] Some have spent months or years in jail already, with many pleading guilty in order to avoid jail. However one views the politics of those who protested on January 6 in Washington DC, the prosecution and jailing of those who question (or even just doubt) election results portends sinister ends. Workers should demand: Drop all the charges and indictments against Trump, his lawyers and all January 6 protestors!

The collapse of capitalist democracy

Much of the so-called left caught a bad case of “Trump Derangement Syndrome”, and many are still afflicted by it. That is, a pathological hatred of Trump which is so intense that it distorts political judgement and even a rational assessment of the issues. Some of the acts of Trump in power were as criminal as many Democratic presidents before him, such as the assassination of Iranian Quds Force General Qassem Soleimani,[21] the bombing of Syria in 2017,[22] and a failed regime change attempt in Venezuela.[23] Nevertheless, Trump never actually started a war during his 2016 – 2020 presidency, began the withdrawal from Afghanistan and Syria, and today at least claims he would end NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine “in 24 hours”.[24] Even just on foreign policy, the Democrats and the US deep state cannot allow another President who at least pays lip service to ending US “forever wars”. Indeed, one of the reasons Trump was elected in 2016 was on the back of promises to put an end to the never-ending series of regime change wars, by previous Republican and Democratic presidents.

Domestically, Trump did succumb to pressure with the fraudulent “Covid-19 pandemic” by authorising “Operation Warp Speed”,[25] which accelerated the rollout of what became potentially deadly vaccines.[26] However, Trump backed away from pushing down hard on Covid political repression, and now cannot be trusted by the US ruling class to once again enforce any form of “health” totalitarianism. The Democrats and their woke left tails joined forces with many Union officials to enforce unprecedented vaccine and facemask mandates, which only a few Republican governed states avoided. Not without a basis, Trump is today claiming that the Democrats are threatening to bring back Covid lockdowns and facemask mandates in an attempt to steal the 2024 election.[27] It is certainly a possibility that this could potentially be what is being planned, with President Biden commenting that a new Covid vaccine “that works” (an admission that previous ones have not?) will be authorised, and that it will be recommended for everyone to take it “whether they’ve gotten it before or not..”.[28]

Threats to be bring back “Covid”, the jailing of presidential candidates, the rigging of elections, the criminalisation of anyone who questions election results – all this and more are clear indications that capitalism today can no longer allow the usual procedures of bourgeois democracy to take place. Either the ruling class will utilise a form of fascism as it did in the West during 2020 to 2022 under the guise of “health” or even another pretext, OR it will fix elections and jail candidates or any supporters who protest the blatant extinguishing of what were assumed to be democratic rights. The collapse of bourgeois “democracy” is the surest sign that capitalism itself – with its vast gap between rich and poor, crumbling infrastructure and increasing repression – must be overthrown. Capitalist democracy must be replaced with workers’ democracy – the rule of elected workers’ councils administering public ownership of the major means of production through a planned economy. Key to this is the preparation of Marxist vanguard parties which fight for the victory of internationally linked workers’ republics.

WORKERS LEAGUE

www.redfireonline.com

E: workersleague@protonmail.com

[1] www.wikiwand.com/en/Lawfare (30-08-2023)

[2] www.reuters.com/legal/what-charges-does-trump-face-new-yorks-hush-money-case-2023-04-05/ (30-08-2023)

[3] www.apnews.com/article/donald-trump-documents-maralago-politics-florida-charges-bee867f48da593d351c5a91e87c356a9 (30-08-2023)

[4] www.octoldit.com/exclusive-national-archives-and-media-caught-in-another-lie-evidence-shows-obama-did-have-classified-docs-in-the-33-million-pages-he-took-with-him-when-he-left-office%ef%bf%bc/ (30-08-2023)

[5] www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2023-08-15/explainer-trumps-four-indictments (30-08-2023)

[6] www.100percentfedup.com/breaking-another-conservative-mi-lawmaker-requests-forensic-audit-of-2020-election-benson-recounts-are-not-enough-we-must-examine-ballots-tabulators-and-chain-of-custody-all-of-it/ (30-08-2023)

[7] www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/aug/21/stolen-rigged-and-illegitimate-democrats-long-hist/ (30-08-2023)

[8] www.newsweek.com/what-rico-charges-trump-potential-charge-1819650 (30-08-2023)

[9] www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/01/breaking-another-video-corrupt-election-workers-feeding-ballots-machines-numerous-times/ (30-08-2023)

[10] www.thefederalist.com/2020/12/07/no-the-georgia-vote-counting-video-was-not-debunked-not-even-close/ (30-08-2023)