'All Bets Are Off': Conservative Lawyers Say GOP Prosecutors Need to 'Take Off Gloves' Against Biden
It’s not just that former President Donald Trump was indicted by a grand jury. It’s that the indictment was over a seven-year-old case well past the statute of limitations at the state level.
But wait, a progressive, George Soros-backed prosecutor who represents one borough in the city of New York said. That state crime is actually a federal crime because it involved campaign finance violations. Except, as legal experts have noted, that prosecutor has no jurisdiction to enforce federal law.
But never mind all that. As the old saying goes, “you can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.” Now, the left thinks they’ve finally nailed their orange ham sandwich.
The problem: Turnabout is fair play. And now, conservative lawyers and judicial activists tell the New York Post it’s high time to start looking at who can indict President Joe Biden when he leaves office. And not just him, either.
“All bets are off. You can expect grand jury indictments of leftist politicians like Biden, [former House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and [Senate Majority Leader Chuck] Schumer as surely as night follows day,” Tom Fitton, president of conservative watchdog legal group Judicial Watch, told the Post.
“You can be sure that there are prosecutors across Florida and Texas right now who are looking for a state law hook into the Biden family,” he said.
“And if they’re not, they’re not doing their jobs.”
Meanwhile, Mike Davis — a former chief counsel for nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee and president of the Article III Project — had this to say: “Two wrongs don’t make it right, but it makes it even.”
“Republicans need to learn how to take off the gloves and put on the brass knuckles and break glass jaws — politically and legally, not physically,” Davis said.
“If New York can turn a routine settlement of a business dispute seven years ago into a felony, I think our Republican AGs and DAs should get creative.”
The indictment of Trump stems from a non-disclosure agreement with adult performer Stormy Daniels (or Stephanie Clifford, depending on whether you know her by the stage name she took when her clothes were off or her legal name when she’s required to appear in public fully clothed, respectively).
In the days leading up to the 2016 election, Daniels was paid $130,000 not to go public with an allegation she had an affair with Trump. She later went public with her claims in a 2018 book that made little lasting impact aside from ruining the game “Mario Kart” for all too many of us.
Bragg’s case is based on the notion that, because Trump accounted for the payment as legal expenses to his then-attorney Michael Cohen, the typical state misdemeanor such errant bookkeeping would carry becomes a violation of federal campaign finance law.
And a grand jury bought it. Now, Davis expects the floodgates to open — and plenty of grand juries to be buying plenty of things about Democratic politicians.
“You just need probable cause. A grand jury can indict a ham sandwich. We just saw that in New York,” Davis said.
“And the Bidens actually committed real crimes. These are real crimes that the Bidens committed. There is smoking gun evidence that the Bidens were corruptly and illegally on Chinese and Ukrainian oligarchs’ payrolls.”
Davis said there were other potential areas where Biden could be charged.
“I understand the Bidens may have had some oil and gas deals that deal with Texas. I think maybe Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton should start looking at this long and hard … and Louisiana with [Republican state Attorney General Jeff] Landry,” Davis said.
“Paxton and Landry, they need to look at this,” he continued. “And if you can find a conspiracy and any of the overt acts of a conspiracy are committed in any of those states, you can bring charges.”
Mind you, a sitting president cannot be indicted, just impeached, for crimes. But that doesn’t mean that once the clock runs out on the Biden presidency, there isn’t a prosecutor somewhere looking to make a name for himself who’s going to ham-sandwich Uncle Joe. He’s not all; former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been credibly accused of insider trading, and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has also been the subject of scrutiny for dodgy stock moves.
One of Trump’s most vocal allies — former Maricopa County (Arizona) Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted in a criminal contempt case seen by conservatives as politically motivated — said there was a “double standard” against conservative politicians. (Arpaio, by the by, was given a pardon by Trump in 2017.)
“The criminal justice system is not always fair, believe me, and this is an example,” Arpaio said.
“This sets a little precedent,” Arpaio added. “Now the word is out that you can go and indict an ex-president and a current president and they opened another door. But now everybody’s going to flex their muscles and use this case. So now we’re gonna threaten all presidents or ex-presidents.”
And this is why we’ve tried to avoid opening this Pandora’s Box in the past. Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon didn’t just have the effect of ending the “long national nightmare” of Watergate, it also ensured post-presidential vengeance-seeking didn’t become the norm.
The same thing happened when Bill Clinton reached an agreement with a special prosecutor on the day before he left office in 2001 where he would give up his law license for five years and pay a fine of $25,000 in return for a promise of immunity in matters relating to his false testimony and alleged obstruction of justice in the Monica Lewinsky affair.
But now, the seal has been broken — and it’s been broken by a clout-chasing progressive district attorney with an intentionally skewed vision of the law and a profound hope he can find a trial jury that hates his ham sandwich just as much as the grand jury did.
Good luck with that. In the meantime, Alvin Bragg will potentially become famous as the man who started a trend that should worry us all: the pro forma prosecution of any politician who ruffles liberal feathers.
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