Recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings and scandals in a number of the court cases cooked up against Donald Trump have thrown Democrats into a furor, with the timing of a number of the trials of the former president now up in the air.
Deeply concerned about the reelectability of President Joseph Biden, the Democrats’ election strategy relies on using the courts to either break Trump or throw him in jail before November. They couple this with a hysterical media campaign that paints Trump as a dangerous “insurrectionist” and his many working-class supporters as “MAGA fascists.”
This ultrafactional campaign by the Democrats, and a partisan response-in-kind by many Republicans, involves dangerous attacks on constitutional freedoms that workers need.
The coarsening of capitalist politics has been underway for decades, but was accelerated sharply by the Democrats, starting with the 2016 election. Hillary Clinton derided Trump’s supporters as “a basket of deplorables,” while her party unleashed the FBI against him, fabricating the Russia/Trump collusion hoax. Over the next four years they used more FBI dirty tricks, impeachment attempts and relentless attacks in the media to try to bring him down, deepening the crisis of the capitalist two-party system.
After winning a close election, Biden quickly made clear he wanted his attorney general, Merrick Garland, to go after Trump. Since then, Democrats have fabricated case after case against him. But each one has run into delays, and the political character of the prosecutions gets clearer for tens of millions to see.
The Justice Department appointed Jack Smith as its special counsel, tasked with stopping Trump. Since then he’s filed two federal prosecutions aimed at doing just that. One includes accusations of espionage for doing something every modern-day president has done, holding onto allegedly classified documents when they left office.
But recent congressional testimony by another special counsel, Robert Hur, shows that Smith’s charges are a partisan setup. Revelations showed that Biden also “mishandled” secret documents after stepping down as vice president in 2017 and keeping them in several locations. Attempting to appear “nonpartisan,” Garland appointed Hur to look into Biden’s actions.
Hur showed Biden had in fact held onto such material and shared it with his ghostwriter, but said he wouldn’t be charged, while Smith hit Trump with a 40-count indictment for the same thing.
Prosecutor ‘withholds evidence’
The trial of Trump for concealing hush money payments to Stephanie Clifford — better known as Stormy Daniels — during the 2016 election campaign was set to start in New York March 25. But days before, prosecutors announced they had come up with 100,000 pages of new evidence, leading Judge Juan Merchan to postpone the trial until at least mid-April.
Trump’s lawyers are asking for more time to wade through the massive drop of material, and urge Merchan to sanction the prosecution for withholding evidence. The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution mandates that the accused has the right to be fully and timely informed of the evidence against them.
Democratic District Attorney Alvin Bragg is pressing Judge Merchan to gag Trump, while liberal media rant daily about the need for the courts to pillory him. On March 18, one week before jury selection was due, the Peacock channel released a salacious documentary titled “Stormy,” featuring Clifford.
Another trial Trump faces, on racketeering charges in Georgia, has been delayed by salacious revelations. In this case, they concern the previously hidden relationship between District Attorney Fani Willis and Nathan Wade, the lead prosecutor she hired and paid handsomely. Judge Scott McAfee ruled that because their relationship had at least the “appearance of impropriety,” either Willis or Wade had to step down from the case. Wade quit.
Trump’s lawyers say they intend to appeal McAfee’s ruling that Willis can continue to prosecute the case. Any trial date is up in the air.
Start dates in each of the four criminal trials against Trump have been pushed back or have not been set, infuriating liberals, who think that friendly courts, not voters, should determine the election.
Jay Bratt, who works on Smith’s prosecution team in the government’s classified documents case, told Judge Aileen Cannon that putting the Republican candidate for president on trial just days before the November vote wouldn’t violate Justice Department policy. It’s hard to imagine a more blatant case of “election interference,” the very crime Smith accuses Trump of!
Democrats drive to silence Kennedy
Democrats are also making a concerted effort to keep third capitalist parties — or anyone else, including the Socialist Workers Party’s presidential candidate Rachele Fruit — off the ballot, fearing they may take votes away from Biden.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a scion of the wealthy Kennedy clan, is running for president and Democrats are livid. They’ve filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission accusing him of violating campaign finance laws in petitioning for ballot status.
Liberal commentators are perplexed that Biden’s poll ratings are in the doldrums even though there’s an uptick in the U.S. capitalist economy, with relatively low unemployment. But the capitalist class and workers see this differently. Bosses seek to use the upturn to squeeze even more profits from workers’ backs, while workers feel more confident and look to use the unions to fight for the things we need.
In these struggles, safeguarding constitutional freedoms that protect workers and our organizations from government attack is indispensable.