The Tree Gets Poisoned

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Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, sitting with attorneys Emil Bove (L) and Todd Blanche (R), attends his trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments linked to extramarita... Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, sitting with attorneys Emil Bove (L) and Todd Blanche (R), attends his trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments linked to extramarital affairs, at Manhattan Criminal Court in New York City, on May 21, 2024. After approximately five weeks, 19 witnesses, reams of documents and a dash of salacious testimony, the prosecution against Donald Trump rested its case May 20, 2024, handing over to the defense before closing arguments expected next week. (Photo by Curtis Means / POOL / AFP) (Photo by CURTIS MEANS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images) MORE LESS
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The DOJ moved to drop charges against three prominent people on Wednesday: two Trump employees charged in the Mar-a-Lago records case, and ex-Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE).

None of these cases were political prosecutions. The Mar-a-Lago defendants were charged for allegedly helping Trump illegally retain national defense records while out of office; Fortenberry was fighting a 2022 conviction on lying to the FBI and concealing foreign campaign contributions.

The DOJ is set to be run by some of the attorneys who defended Trump in his criminal cases. They include Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, nominated for the number two and three spots.

All this sends an important signal, one that Trump himself made explicit in a Truth Social post: “I am very proud of our Department of Justice, something I have not been able to say for many years!”

The signal is that Trump has the power to stop (and potentially start) any criminal case. Nobody else in modern American history has really wielded this power in the way that we’re likely to see over the coming months and years.

We are beginning to see the fruit of that poison tree. In countries with corrupt prosecution systems, whether or not someone is under indictment does not send a clear signal about them. It may very well be that an indictment, if anything, is positive: evidence of an independence or unwillingness to bow down to an autocrat.

That’s no reason to avoid general skepticism of prosecutors, but it’s the kind of shift that makes it harder to discern what is real and what is bogus. Take the prosecution of ex-Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), sentenced on Wednesday to 11 years in prison. The saga of Gold Bars Bob was a real public corruption case. We covered it.

But it highlights the issue: ending real cases and bringing fake ones makes it very difficult to tell who is actually a bad actor.

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  1. Avatar for zandru zandru says:

    Not surprising, but still depressing. And I can only assume that the “investigations” (aka witch hunts) of the prosecutors and DoJ researchers are already underway.

  2. “Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the complexity of human evil; but only the hypocrite is rotten to the core.” – Hannah Arendt

  3. For a while there, I thought the corruption of the DOJ was near the top of the worst things the convicted felon and his cronies would do. Now, although it’s still on my list, it’s got much more competition for top spots.

  4. Merrick Garland was still grasping onto the “But the rule of law” bullshit. He should have released Part II of the Trump investigation, knowing this is what was destined to occur.

    Nope. Garland is STILL living in the past, while Trump, Musk, Patel, RFK, Jr., et al, are full steam ahead into a destructive future for America.

  5. At the ending of the Academy Award winning movie, Z, a number of corrupt officials were tried and convicted on the charge “abuse of power” (not that this meant much after a right-wing junta seized power shortly thereafter).

    Wonder if we have a law like that around here; think we’ll want it err long if we don’t, assuming there is someone still willing and able to prosecute it and a court still able to judge.

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