Here in the U.S., with few exceptions, we have a commendable tradition that victorious politicians do not use the criminal justice system to prosecute or otherwise disable their rivals and adversaries. At the presidential level, before Trump the two most prominent examples against that tradition were the prosecution of Aaron Burr by Thomas Jefferson in 1807, and the prosecution of Eugene Debs by Woodrow Wilson in 1918. Otherwise, our defeated presidential candidates have gone peacefully to retirement.
But then, after Trump was defeated in 2020, that tradition was abrogated in rather spectacular fashion. At both the federal and state levels, prosecutors associated with the Democratic Party unleashed an unprecedented multi-barreled lawfare barrage, both criminal and civil, against the defeated adversary: the Justice Department (Jack Smith) prosecution for alleged “obstruction of justice”; the separate Justice Department (also Jack Smith) prosecution for alleged mishandling of classified documents; the New York State (Alvin Bragg) prosecution for for some 35 felonies, all involving alleged mis-recording of blackmail payments as a “legal expense” in books and records of a private company; the separate New York State (Letitia James) civil case seeking to bankrupt Trump with hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties for allegedly over-valuing his properties on personal financial statements.
Read Full Article: https://hotair.com/headlines/2026/11/04/saving-democracy-by-prosecuting-political-adversaries-a-roundup-n3820614
