Forget The Debates; This Election Is All About The Mugshots.

| Like Lilliputians trying to hold down Gulliver with an infinity of string, rogue prosecutors are trying to tie up the leading presidential candidate via lawfare—the latest campaign dirty trick. |

You’d think someone as glued to politics as me would salivate in anticipation of the presidential debates, immerse myself in all the pre-game shows, and watch every minute of the event itself live—on top of DVR’ing the whole thing for endless playbacks. 

Not exactly. I’m always less interested in raw news and more interested in the analysis and commentary the morning after.  This is especially true when it comes to listening to politicians—any politicians—in any venue: press conferences, stump speeches, and very much debates. 

I probably like debates the least.  First, they’re not really debates—at least as us veteran high-school debaters think of them.  They’re joint press conferences where chosen news personalities toss questions at the candidates, and we get to hear one minute sound-bite answers—aggravated by school-yard style, angry disagreements, rude against-the-rules interruptions, and everyone trying to thread the needle perfectly between being outraged at what others are saying, yet doing so from a position of infinite confidence and Zen-like calm. 

Too quick to interrupt and you come across as rude and annoying.  Too reluctant to interrupt  and you’re judged not to have the fire and determination to make the case for your own presidential bid. 

I’d be terrible at this macabre dance, and it’s not really a skill I seek in a presidential nominee. 

Anyway, there was a dark, theater-of-the-absurd element overriding all this, considering Donald Trump was polling 40 points ahead of his nearest challenger, chose quite rightly not to attend the event because of that fact, and had something more important to do the next day: surrender himself to Fulton County courthouse in Georgia, where a two-bit local prosecutor has staked her political career on obtaining a mug-shot of the man whose face drives Democrats insane. 

So I watched none of this live: not the debates nor the breathless OJ-Simpson-Ford-Bronco-Car-Chase spectacle of the slavish media following Trump’s airliner-sized private jet as it taxied on the tarmac so the nation could witness the spectacle of America’s 45^th president getting fingerprinted and mug-shotted.  How they must be laughing in places like Beijing, Moscow, and Pyongyang.  (“No more lectures to us, Comrade, about how we run our elections.  Welcome to tyranny—it’s so much easier, don’t you agree?”)

Part of what made the process so silly—and I can’t think of a better word for it—is that there’s not one person in America who can describe, with a straight face, exactly what crimes Donald Trump is supposed to have committed that somehow generated 91 criminal charges against him—carrying aggregate combined jail time of over 700 years.

This, in a country where increasingly armed looters, arsonists, burglars, and rapists are—by design of Lefty DA’s like Fanni Willis—required neither to post bail or serve jail time.

The point isn’t that no one is above the law.  Thousands are above the law (see prior paragraph.)  But never before in our nation’s history has the law been weaponized by the party in power to go after its political opponents.  This is not to say that anyone running for president has some magical “get out of jail free” card, granting immunity as long as they’re a candidate for office.

But if you are going to go after your political opponents, you’d better have rock solid evidence of a real, extremely serious, obvious crime—not one based on some novel, convoluted legal theory.  Because it’s quite possible that the mere act of using the justice system to stop your political opponent will not only do far greater harm to American democracy, but is itself a far more egregious act that anything you’re claiming your opponent did.

Now, there are some crimes that clearly rise to a level where they can’t be ignored.  Trump used to joke that he could shoot someone on  Fifth Avenue and it wouldn’t hurt his poll numbers.  The remark was in bad taste, even though the underlying point was likely true.   But if he actually did shoot and kill someone on Fifth Avenue, he’d deserve arrest, a mug shot, a high bail, and a speedy trial.  If guilty, he should go to prison.

Here’s another example.  Let’s say—while in office—Trump used his power to entice over $50 million of bribes from foreign governments and interests, in return for government favors, with that money discretely channeled through twenty shell companies set up to launder it, and with the funds ending up in the bank accounts of over ten of his family members.  And let’s say that was documented by tracing actual bank wires reported to the Treasury Department, testimony from multiple witnesses who had nothing to gain and everything to lose by coming forward and blowing the whistle, and by clear evidence of favors in fact having been granted by Trump. 

Even the U.S. Constitution says that for a crime as serious as bribery, a president is to be removed from office. 

Or, final example, say that Trump—while engaging in this bribery racket—also used his own Justice Department to try to cover up his crimes, much as Nixon tried but failed to do during Watergate.

Those would all be crimes serious enough that the nation could not ignore them, and prosecutors would be required—morally and legally—to seek justice.

But Trump never did shoot someone on Fifth Avenue.  Nor did he haul in over $50 million in foreign bribe money for his family.  Nor did he ever use the Justice Department to cover up his crimes.  So what did he do?   This is where no one in America could explain it with a straight face.  But let me try.  In New York he may have misclassified hush money paid to a porn star.  Nothing wrong with paying hush money to a porn star, but recording it incorrectly on government documents does violate some paperwork rule here or there.  Unfortunately, the statute of limitations had already run out on that “crime” before he was charged with it.  You have to tangle yourself up in novel legal theories to try to show there was a prosecutable crime here. 

After leaving the White House, he brought some documents with him to his personal residence (as every president does) and it may be that some of those documents were classified and should not have been at his house.  Except that the Presidential Records Act seems to give former presidents the authority to do precisely what Trump did.  You have to tangle yourself up in novel legal theories to try to show there was a crime here. 

And the last two indictments (one federal, one state) claim that Trump, by using every legal means to contest an election he believed was wrongly decided (precisely as did Hilary Clinton, Stacy Abrams, Al Gore, and a zillion other sore-loser politicians), he was somehow trying to overthrow the U.S. government.  Or something like that.  You have to tangle yourself up in novel legal theories to try to show there was a crime in pursuing every legal means to contest an election—when our laws explicitly allow you to do precisely that.

Most (non-partisan) legal experts agree that in those jurisdictions where only rabid, Trump-hating Democrats inhabit the jury pool (that would be at least three of the four venues), Trump might get convicted of something obscure, but it will be so outrageous the conviction would almost certainly be overturned on appeal. 

At that point, no one will care.  The purpose of the exercise is to massively interfere with Trump’s ability to run his campaign during the 2024 election year.  All these indictments are for actions that took place years ago—and were known years ago—but the corrupt prosecutors cleverly chose to bring them at just the right time where they’d most screw up the 2024 campaign.  Think Comey and the FBI deliberately interfered with the 2016 election?  Think those 52 former intelligence officers who lied about Hunter’s laptop being Russian disinformation deliberately interfered with the 2020 election?  They’ve got nothing on the rogue and rabid prosecutors now using dirty legal tricks to try to stop Trump from winning in 2024.

This brings us back to the debates Wednesday night. 

All I really care about in 2024 is that a Republican wins the White House.  In terms of policy, there simply isn’t that much difference between the GOP candidates.  But the direction a Republican President would take the nation is about 180 degrees opposite of where a Democrat would take us.  Love what Biden has done to America and our reputation around the world?  Yep, you want to see another Dem in the Oval Office.  Hate what Biden has done to America?  You need to vote GOP. 

So winning in November of next year is the ball we need to keep our eye on.  That said, if I could click my fingers and choose the 2024 winner, I’d choose Trump.   Not at all because I think he’d make the best president.  No, for that I’d choose Vivek or Ron or maybe Tim Scott. But by electing Trump, we make it clear that those trying to corruptly use lawfare to bring down the leading presidential candidate will not succeed.  Otherwise it would be like letting Putin win in Ukraine.  

You don’t want to send the wrong signals: either to future dictators seeking to expand their territory by war, or to those seeking to bring down democracies from within using dirty campaign tricks.  Mugshots of presidential candidates are not a good look for America.