Authored by J. Peder Zane via RealClear Wire,
The Democrats have an ace in the hole in their relentless war on the Constitution – conservative America’s reverence for the concept of the rule of the law.
Only their steadfast commitment to this traditional ideal explains why conservatives are allowing Democrats to flagrantly corrupt our judicial system to destroy their opponents and protect themselves. For all their huffing and puffing, conservatives have effectively taken a let the system play itself out attitude while Democrats nakedly politicize that system through their partisan indictments of former President Trump and their Potemkin Village probes of the Bidens. These are not statements of opinion. These are facts.
Part of me is glad that so many legal analysts have spilled so much ink exposing these charades. But we degrade our country and ourselves when we treat this unspeakable behavior with anything other than horrified contempt. Every good-faith critique normalizes and legitimizes this profoundly un-American conspiracy.
Viewing the obvious forest rather than the tangled trees, the cases against Trump are a continuation of the deceitful effort by Democrats and their deep state allies, especially in the DOJ, to annihilate their chief political opponent. That effort began even before his election when Hillary Clinton’s campaign manufactured false claims that Trump had conspired with Vladimir Putin to steal the 2016 election. When that sham was exposed, they almost immediately made Trump only the third president in the country to be impeached for asking Ukraine’s leader to look into the Biden family’s influence-peddling schemes. They set aside almost every rule and order of business by rushing to impeach him once again after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. While that was going on, Democrats insistently rained down other bogus concerns – that he was violating the Emoluments Clause because wealthy foreigners continued to stay at his hotels, that his alleged mental instability made him unfit – to remove him from office.
The hypocrisy is beyond belief: The party that assails Republicans for questioning the integrity of the highly irregular 2020 election spent years and vast government resources to undo the results of 2016.
The charges Trump now faces are part of the ongoing campaign by Democrats to subvert the rule of law to delegitimize what they see as the greatest threat to their power.
In the meantime, Democrats are blatantly using the criminal justice system to protect President Biden. It is now beyond dispute that Biden lied to the American people when he said he never discussed foreign business with his son Hunter and when he claimed during his final 2020 debate with Trump that Hunter’s laptop, which contained evidence of those corrupt dealings, was a “Russian plant.” Has a candidate ever peddled more consequential falsehoods?
In fact, the president was not only aware of his son’s influence-peddling schemes, whose sole selling point was the connection to his vast power. He was an active participant through phone calls and meetings with clients. Irony does not capture the deviousness of the Democrats’ decision to impeach Trump for asking Ukraine to look into this corruption.
The cover-up of the Bidens’ conduct is equally disturbing. The U.S. attorney in Delaware assigned to the case, David C. Weiss, is a former colleague of Biden’s late son Beau. Although the tax avoidance charges involved are straightforward, Weiss spent more than five years allegedly looking into them – allowing the statute of limitations to run out on millions of unreported earnings Hunter generated in 2014 and 2015. Note that even as the president calls on Americans to pay their fair share, neither he nor his allies have demanded that Hunter pay his.
Indeed, we only know about Weiss’ corruption because of two courageous IRS whistleblowers. In response, Weiss quickly struck a deal with Hunter to settle the matter, crafting a sweetheart deal that would have let him off the hook with a slap on the wrist. All might have been forgiven but for the presiding judge, who rejected the deal last month as “not standard” and potentially unconstitutional.
In response to this scandal, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Weiss as special counsel to look into the mess. This move is beyond brazen – Weiss is now apparently in charge of probing his own misconduct. The goal is obvious: Protect the president, and let the statute of limitations run out on other alleged crimes while shutting down any questions about the “ongoing investigation.”
The arrogance is jaw-dropping; the lawlessness is in plain sight. Democrats are not even trying to hide their malfeasance – which is part of their method. If they can make us accept their authority to twist the system so that it is no longer a means of justice but a tool of their political power, then their possibilities are unlimited.
Imagine if the roles were reversed: What if Republican prosecutors had indicted a former Democratic president, who was also the party’s leading candidate in the next election, in four separate cases on 91 questionable charges while a GOP-controlled Department of Justice simultaneously protected its sitting-president boss, who was seeking reelection, by slow-walking a probe of his family’s alleged crimes?
The corporate media would be in high dudgeon about this assault on the Constitution and the streets would be filled with left-wing protestors who would make the BLM riots, the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and the harassment of Supreme Court justices in response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade seem mild.
Here’s the conundrum. While no one wants conservatives to start engaging in direct action, their passivity is allowing Democrats to weaponize the government. On the one hand, I admire their faith in our system. Even Trump, for all his barking, has largely submitted to his gross mistreatment.
But our system is shattered. The rule of law is now more concept than fact. Where’s the outrage?
J. Peder Zane is a RealClearInvestigations editor and columnist. He previously worked as a book review editor and book columnist for the News & Observer (Raleigh), where his writing won several national honors. Zane has also worked at the New York Times and taught writing at Duke University and Saint Augustine’s University.
