Queens man convicted

A legal system under severe stress is holding. Can the political system do the same?

That’s the focus of the instant analysis of a Manhattan jury’s unanimous agreement that Donald Trump is guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election. That verdict is deemed murky, at least in media outlets that aren’t propaganda arms for the former president.

What’s clear today is that the man who boasted he could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and not lose any votes, could not get away with the underlying crime.

Complain as they might that the charges brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg were a joke, ptosecutors weaved an airtight case that the charges represented an effort to silence a porn star in the month leading up to a pivotal election he won in the Electoral College while collecting three million fewer votes.

I wonder if pundits had the same opinion when Al Capone, the mastermind of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, went to jail for tax evasion.

The legal system can adapt to meet the challenge. So far.

Trump’s MAGA Army of red-tied elected Republicans — the same ones who joined with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in saying it was up to the legal system to deal with Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election — were in high dudgeon over the “weaponization” of the legal system.

Puhleeze.

Weaponization is holding a press conference to announce you are not filing charges against a political candidate but chastizing her behavior. Twice. In violation of Justice Department policy.

Weaponization is chanting Lock Her Up. Without a shred of evidence.

Weaponization is storming the Capitol with bear spray and flag poles and threatening to hang the vice president to overturn election results.

Weaponization is calling for the death penalty for five men falsely convicted of rape.

And weaponization is vowing revenge after a verdict:

“The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, who commands a following of millions of subscribers on YouTube and social media, said after the verdict that Trump ‘should make and publish a list of ten high ranking Democrat criminals who he will have arrested when he takes office.’ The Federalist chief executive Sean Davis said he wants ‘to see lists of which Democrat officials are going to be put in prison.’ And Fox News’ Jesse Watters declared, ‘We’re going to vanquish the evil forces that are destroying this republic.’”

In a nation of laws, not men, facts matter. Courtrooms run on facts, not alternative facts, better known as lies. Trump had ample opportunity to present a set of facts to counter the evidence put forward by prosecutors.

He didn’t even mount a defense, except for one witness who probably did him more harm than good. Instead, his attorney coined the term GLOAT in attempt to shift attention away from the mounds of evidence.

And of course, he continued to lie in the one court, the one of public opinion, where he could not be charged with perjury. He was not gagged. He chose not to take the stand in his own defense.

We will now return to that other court, where a lie travels around the globe while the truth is putting on its shoes. That’s because the legal one is still being stressed by a Supreme Court that appears unwilling to allow the public to hear facts about the January 6th insurrection before November.

And by a Trump-appointed judge slow walking a case where the evidence of his refusal to return classified documents was stacked up in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom.

Which leaves it up to the political system, and a political press corps that has preferred focusing on polls rather than the stakes, to guide voters to the voting booth.

Trump is scheduled to be sentenced July 11, four days before the start of the Republican National Convention that will coronate him as candidate of the “law and order party.”

Politics is colliding with the basic foundation of this nation. The ultimate question on the ballot isn’t Trump versus Joe Biden. It is what do we stand for. Will the man who has repeatedly cried election interference, who now stands convicted of doing just that in 2016, prevail?

Has the system really worked? Ask me again in November.

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Quick added props to the Queens Daily Eagle, whose headline I borrowed!