Process Is The Punishment: Why Endless Trump Probes Never Require Convictions | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the The Daily Wire. The author of this post is Greg Wilson.

    The Manhattan district attorney is reopening an investigation into former President Trump's hush-money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, and you may be thinking, "When will they ever learn?"

    From Russiagate, a pair of impeachments, the Justice Department's raid on Mar-a-Lago, to yet another special counsel, it seems like Trump's tormentors are an army of Charlie Browns trying to kick the football out of Lucy's elusive hold.

    But that's not what's really happening. Prosecutors usually only like to take on cases they know they can win, but it's different when it comes to dirtying up Trump. Law professor Malcolm Feeley said it best: The process is the punishment.

    Dragging Trump through one dubious probe after another, only to see him slip through their fingers, may elevate the 45th president in the eyes of his supporters. It's Teflon Don playing rope-a-dope with hopelessly hapless and palpably partisan prosecutors. But his detractors know that those dramatic news conferences wherein resolute lawmen vow to pursue justice against Trump leave a stench that lingers long after the case falls apart. It's the legal equivalent of those bombshell news stories citing anonymous sources that later merit an unobtrusive correction.

    To be sure, Trump makes plenty of trouble for himself. He did pay Stormy Daniels $130,000 through his turncoat fixer Michael Cohen to keep quiet about their tawdry tryst just before the 2016 election. Trump's critics saw it as a campaign violation masked by fraud. The problem with the case was always that high-profile citizen Trump had as much reason as candidate Trump to want to keep the story out of the news. It was never clear that paying Daniels to agree to keep mum was only because he was running for president.

    New York Attorney General Letitia James is out to get Trump, too. When she ran four years ago, she vowed to "use every area of the law to investigate President Trump and his business transactions and that of his family as well," and she appears to be that rare politician who keeps her campaign promises.

    She might never harpoon her white whale, but at least James managed to roll up the company's longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, who pleaded guilty to taking $1.7 million off the books for things like his grandchild's school tuition even as he refused to implicate Trump. No matter, James moved on with a $250 million civil suit against Trump's business empire based on alleged tax fraud.

    Last week, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to determine if the Department of Justice's January 6 and Mar-a-Lago probes warrant criminal charges. Both cases could be severely undermined by recent events. Trump just got reinstated to Twitter, which directed attention to some of his final tweets before the pre-Elon Musk regime banned him. In them, he called twice for protesters to be peaceful and respectful of the police. As for the Mar-a-Lago Raid, after months of breathless reporting that Trump may have purloined top-secret documents, The Washington Post rather sheepishly reported just after the midterm elections that a "review by agents and prosecutors" found no "nefarious effort by Trump to leverage, sell or use the government secrets," the paper reported.

    And with that, the absurd notion that Trump took classified nuclear weapons information from the White House in order to sell it to our nation's enemies and could thus face execution(!), a theory pushed by MSNBC and its fellow travelers, fell apart.

    New Special Counsel Jack Smith is the next man up in the never-ending battle to slime Trump. It allows the Justice Department to pretend the investigations are non-partisan. But Smith has an interesting history. As chief of the DOJ public integrity section during the Obama administration, he helped the IRS target Tea Party groups, according to a House Oversight Committee investigation. Oh, and his wife helped make a fawning documentary about Michelle Obama and is a Biden campaign donor.

    Smith won a 2014 conviction of Bob McDonnell, a former Republican governor of Virginia who once had presidential aspirations, for taking improper gifts from a businessman looking to influence Old Dominion policy. The conviction was reversed by a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court that found McDonnell never wielded his influence in exchange for the gifts he took, but the damage was done.

    Trump and McDonnell aren't saints, but no one's proven either is a criminal, either. They've just both been punished by the process.

    The views expressed in this piece are the author's own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

poll#162

In what may be the most divisive period in modern American History, even more divisive than the turbulent sixties due to today's lack of patriotism, consider what are the major catalysts causing so much of this calamity of conflict, and vote: What most instigates the division of America, on this day September 20, 2022?

  Racism within our society

  Sex realignment to the detriment of our society.

  Biden /Harris Wide Open Southern Border Policy for the Demographic Upheaval of OUR Constitutional Republic

  Rampant Crime in Democratic controlled cities, and the possible contagion elsewhere

  Covid Pandemic, and its mishandling at the political, and bureaucratic levels.

  The unresolved questions /allegation regarding the flawed 2020 General Election

  January 6th Riot or "Armed Insurrection", depending upon patriotic perspective

  Joe Biden as Divisive Leader; Ineffective and Corrupt Executive

  Failed Education Industry, from an overall perspective, regarding all levels of education.

  Propagandistic Media in complete conflict with the First Amendment's guarantee of Freedom of Speech, and the awesome responsibility of a Free Press..

  "Orangeman Bad!"

  Bureaucracy rushing to a behemoth size, its unjustified expense, and far too often overreach.

  The Weaponized Deep State for political purposes

  A secular ambivalence to all that is real.

  Record number of overdose deaths from opioids and now Fentanyl

  Biden Administration's disastrous Foreign Policy

  Bidenflation /supply chain failure inevitably evolving into stagflation and recession.

  "Ultra MAGA Extremists" freely speaking louder AND LOUDER!

927 total vote(s)     What's your Opinion?

poll#157

Was it a judicious ploy for Joe Biden's FBI to execute the unprecedented raid of President Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate?

  Yes; the Cheneys despise this former Republican president, and for good reason ... so they say.

  No; never has a former president been treated with this level of vindictive abuse by those temporarily in power.

  Who cares? It's Trump.

932 total vote(s)     What's your Opinion?