With each new discouraging pre-election poll, Democrats everywhere and the liberal media become more frantic. This leads them to rely more and more heavily on the series of court cases they’ve cooked up to bring down President Joseph Biden’s rival, Donald Trump. Their goal is to strip Trump of his businesses, his money, throw him in jail and get him off the ballot.
In their partisan frenzy, the Democrats are dealing dangerous blows to constitutionally protected freedoms that are crucial for workers, our unions and working-class political parties like the Socialist Workers Party.
The Democrats smelled blood when New York Judge Arthur Engoron barred Trump from appealing the $355 million judgment he had issued against him Feb. 16, unless he posted a bond totaling $454 million that his lawyers said is a “practical impossibility.”
Engoron had found Trump guilty of business fraud without even allowing him a trial on the merits of the case. The only trial he ever got was over the scope of the penalty to be imposed. New York Attorney General Letitia James — who campaigned for election on a pledge to bring down Trump — brought the case in hopes of draining his bank accounts, dismantling his real estate business and leaving him unable to campaign.
Engoron’s ruling made a mockery of the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, which says “excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed.”
The Democrats were stunned when a New York State appeals court slashed the bond to $175 million and threw out most of the other restrictions Engoron had imposed on the former president. David Saxe, a former member of the court, told the New York Times the ruling indicates the court is likely to “take a hard look” at Engoron’s entire decision.
Engoron ruled Trump was guilty of fraud for puffing up the value of his properties to get better loan deals, a standard practice among real estate traders. Engoron admits no bank, or anyone else, was harmed by Trump’s transactions, but still imposed the extraordinary fine.
Like the other cases Democrats have cooked up against the Republican candidate, the unfolding of James’ politically motivated legal attack has exposed the fraud of capitalist judicial “neutrality.” Workers know from our own experiences with the rulers’ cops and courts that the criminal “justice” system is rigged.
The drive to crush Trump is driven from the White House. Merrick Garland, President Joseph Biden’s attorney general, appointed Jack Smith as special counsel to go after Trump just three days after the former president’s announcement on Nov. 15, 2022, that he would run against Biden again. Smith is now stage-managing two of the cases targeting the Republican candidate.
Partisan judge runs hush money case
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, another Democrat, has brought 34 counts of falsifying business records against Trump, claiming he did so to cover up alleged hush money payments to Stephanie Clifford, who makes a living as Stormy Daniels. Clifford says Trump paid her off as a way to avoid a scandal that could threaten his 2016 election campaign. Trump says it was to protect the privacy of his family. The case is set to go to trial April 15.
The New York Times and other liberals lionize Clifford as an example for women. The Times calls her a “flawed feminist icon.”
Although the charges against Trump are only misdemeanors, Bragg filed them as felonies, with potential jail time, by claiming they were carried out to further another so-called crime — hiding “unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election.”
Trump’s lawyers say that if anyone is guilty of this charge, it’s Hillary Clinton. In her 2016 campaign, they explain, she “improperly booked campaign expenses as legal payments in connection with the hiring of a research firm to prepare the so-called ‘Steele Dossier.’” This was a salacious assortment of slanders made up by former British spy Christopher Steele to paint Trump’s campaign as secretly in “collusion with Moscow.”
The Democrats promoted this frame-up — bringing in the FBI and a variety of special prosecutors — for months, until it came apart.
In Clifford’s case, Judge Juan Merchan, yet another Democrat, issued pretrial rulings that undermine Trump’s right to be able to mount a serious defense. He will allow Bragg to introduce prejudicial evidence from Trump’s life and relations with women going back two decades, even though they have no bearing on this case.
Trump’s defense intended to present testimony from legal expert Bradley Smith to refute the prosecution’s charge that Trump violated federal election law. But Merchan blocked his testimony. Nor will the defense be allowed to introduce the decision of the Federal Election Commission that declined to bring charges against Trump over the same allegations Bragg is using.
And Merchan ruled the defense cannot challenge the credibility of the main prosecution witness, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer.
Cohen took a plea deal in 2018 and agreed to finger Trump in order to avoid up to 65 years in jail on several charges, including campaign finance violations. He was given a three-year sentence and has since admitted lying to the judge to secure the deal. Trump’s lawyers had planned to move to have Cohen’s testimony disqualified on the grounds he is an inveterate liar.
If the Democrats can use the courts as a partisan tool to deal blows to Trump, a real estate mogul and candidate for one of the rulers’ two main parties, it’s not hard to see what they’ll try to do — and far worse — to workers as we fight boss attacks and increasingly look to organize independently of the bosses’ parties in the political arena. Safeguarding basic freedoms is central to the class struggle today.