Lawfare: Blue laws for red citizens

 From Victor Davis Hanson:

https://victorhanson.com/blue-laws-for-red-citizens/

Blue Laws for Red Citizens

29 Comments / February 22, 2024

Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness

One state prosecutor and one civilian plaintiff have already won huge fines and damages from Donald Trump that may, with legal costs, exceed $500 million.

Trump awaits further civil and criminal liability in three other federal, state, and local indictments.

There are eerie commonalities in all these five court cases involving plaintiff E. Jean Carroll, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, New York Attorney General Letitia James, federal special counsel Jack Smith, and Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis.

One, they are either unapologetically left-wing or associated with liberal causes. They filed their legal writs in big-city, left-wing America—Atlanta, New York, Washington—where liberal judges and jury pools predominate in a manner not characteristic of the country at large.

Two, they are overtly political. Bragg, James, and Willis have either campaigned for office or raised campaign funds by promising to get or even destroy Donald Trump.

Carroll’s suit was funded by left-wing billionaire Reid Hoffman.

Smith sued to rush his court schedule in hopes of putting Trump on trial before the November election.

Three, there would not be any of these cases had Donald Trump not run for the presidency or not been a conservative.

Carroll’s suit bypassed statute of limitation restrictions by prompting the intervention of a left-wing New York legislator. He passed a special bill, allowing a one-year window to waive the statute of limitations for sexual assault claims from decades past.

Until Trump, no New York prosecutor like James had ever filed a civil suit against a business for allegedly overvaluing real estate assets to obtain loans that bank auditors approved and were paid back in full, on time, and with sizable interest profits to the lending institutions.

Alvin Bragg bootstrapped a Trump private non-disclosure agreement into a federal campaign violation in a desperate effort to find something on Trump.

Smith is also charging Trump with insurrectionary activity. But Trump had never been so charged with insurrection, much less convicted of it.

Willis strained to find a way to criminalize Trump’s complaints about his loss of Georgia in the 2020 national election. She finally came up with a racketeering charge, usually more applicable to mafiosi and drug cartels.

Four, in all these cases, the charges could have been equally applicable to fellow left-wing public figures and officials.

Joe Biden, like Trump, was accused of sexual assault decades earlier by former staffer Tara Reade. Yet Reade was torn apart by the media and the left for inconsistencies in her memory. By contrast, the wildly inconsistent and amnesiac E. Jean Carroll won $83 million from Trump.

Jack Smith created the precedent of charging former president Trump for unlawfully removing classified files to his private residence.

But the government simultaneously did not charge Joe Biden for similar offenses. Yet Biden had removed files not for two years but for more than 30. He stored them not in one location but several.

His rickety garage was a mess, not a secure family compound like Trump’s estate. Moreover, Biden did so while a senator and vice president, without any presidential authority to declassify almost any presidential document he wished.

Biden never came forward to report the crime for over thirty years—until Trump was charged. Indeed, he was caught on tape six years ago, admitting to his ghostwriter that he possessed classified files but never reported it.

Bragg might have noticed that both Hillary Clinton (fined $113,000) and Barack Obama (fined $350,000) broke campaign financing laws. Neither was subject to federal criminal charges by local prosecutors.

An array of left-wing celebrities, politicians, 2004 House Members, former Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), and failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams have all recently challenged elections. They sought either to delay or redo ballot counting or, on the federal level, to sidetrack electors to ignore popular votes in their respective states.

These lawfare cases are part of other efforts that were highly partisan and without merit. Recall the Trump “Russian collusion” hoax and the “Russian disinformation” laptop farce.

In another first, some blue states are suing to take Trump’s name off the ballot for “insurrection,” a crime for which he has never been charged.

Total up the deaths, damage, and length of the summer 2020 Antifa/BLM riots. Then compare the tally to the one-day January 6 riot.

The former proved far more lethal, long-lasting, and destructive. Yet very few of the 14,000 arrested rioters in 2020 were ever prosecuted, much less convicted.

By contrast, the Biden administration sought to jail hundreds for crimes allegedly committed on January 6, such as “illegal parading.”

We are entering a dangerous era in America.

Ideology and party affiliations increasingly determine guilt and punishment. Opponents are first targeted, and then laws are twisted and redefined to convict them.

The left is waging lawfare with the implicit message to political opponents: either keep quiet or suffer the consequences.

The Chinese precedent for current America

Our current political climate features the type of class-based anger and redistributionist ideology that prevailed in China during the "Land Reform." 

It starts in elementary, then secondary, then higher education as students are taught ideology and theory instead of basic economics and life skills.

American teachers unions and manipulative politicians are the fundamental cause of systemic racism and class-based antagonism. 

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Xi Van Fleet

@XVanFleet

Valuable historic footage of the CCP’s Land Reform (1949-1953). This is how it was done: Send out a “work team” to villages to “help” the peasants to understand that exploitation of the rich was the root of their poverty and suffering. (DEI training?) Mobilize the poor Coach them on how to “tell their bitterness” (诉苦 or lived experience) against the landlords Hold “ struggle sessions” to denounce the landlords as the “enemy of the people”. Note there were a lot of women activists. Let the people decide the punishment. In the video the people spoke: execution! Confiscate the land from the landlords and give it to the poor Happy ending for the poor? Not so fast. In 1958 all the land was taken back by the state through collectivization. Between 1959-1962, up to 50 million perished during the Great Famine. This is a story of Communist dream turned into hellish nightmare. And history rhymes, doesn’t it?

VDH on the Left's new rules

Posted without comment:

Victor Davis Hanson

@VDHanson

What the Left Has Bequeathed Us The Left has created new rules for national politics. Here are 20 some precedents they now have established for America in the future: 1) When in control of the Senate, demand the end of the filibuster; when not, don’t. 2) Call for the end of the Electoral College–but only if it appears to recently favor the candidate of the opposition. 3) In an election year, change any state balloting laws deemed unhelpful through administrative fiat or court order to favor your political candidate. 4) Seek to flip electors from voting in accordance with the popular vote count in their states; indict as an insurrectionist any of the opposition who dare do the same. 5) Raid the home of any opposition ex-president who removed classified files; exempt any sitting president of your party who did the same. 6) Swarm the private homes of, and then bully and intimidate any, Supreme Court officials, politicians, or citizens you oppose. 7) Appoint two special counsels: one to go after the current chief presidential opponent in an election year; the other to exempt and excuse the sitting president for the very crimes charged against his rival. 8) Lobby to remove any oppositional president through the 25th Amendment; smear any one as ageist who suggests a cognitively challenged sitting resident of your party should be subject to similar invocations of the 25th Amendment. 9) Exempt thousands of arrested rioters from charges of 120 days of arson, looting, injuring 1,500 law enforcement officers, and assault—but only if they are radical supporters of your party. 10) Excuse any demonstrator or rioter for desecrating public monuments and cemeteries or shutting down bridges and freeways, or swarming and disrupting the Capitol Rotunda—but only if they agree with you and/or are pro-Hamas. Otherwise, ensure the charged face lengthy prison sentences. 11) Try to pack the Supreme Court—but only if justices you don’t like are in a majority. 12) Seek in an election year to remove a presidential opponent off state ballots for crimes for which he has never been charged, much less convicted of. 13) First target a presidential opponent, and then change, warp, or redefine laws to convict him. Weaponized prosecutors should always indict their political opponents in jurisdictions where they are guaranteed like-minded justices and jury pools. 14) Violate the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution (the prohibition of “excessive fines”) by having sympathetic judges level multimillion-dollar fines to bankrupt the opposition candidate during a presidential campaign. The more there is no victim of a crime, the higher fines should be leveled for “damages”. 15) Open the border by destroying all the protocols and executive orders of a predecessor president. Then welcome 8-million illegal aliens to “surge” into America on the premise a new constituency might support agendas that American citizens do not. Then call the nonexistent border “secure,” while blaming a predecessor president for having left it secure. 16) Have local prosecutors invent criminal acts of an opposition national presidential candidate in efforts to make it impossible for him to campaign for the presidency. 17) Use the FBI to hire out social media auditors to censor any news deemed problematic for the correct presidential candidate. 18) Hire a foreign national to concoct a smear dossier about one’s opposition political nominee. Ensure the FBI also uses and pays the foreign national to spread untruths among the media and administrative state. 19) On the eve of any major national or midterm election, ensure a president drains the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower gasoline prices. 20) On the eve of any major national or midterm election, ensure a president promises to cancel billions of dollars in contracted federal student loans.

The collapse of equal justice - Musk and Trump

The article below by Jeb Bush (whom I once met in Utah) and Joe Lonsdale is a thoughtful explanation for the erosion of the legal system in the United States. 

I disagree with the authors in the sense that the cases against Elon Musk and Donald Trump don't merely imperil the rule of law; even if reversed, these cases have already established precedent that future litigants and judges will use for personal profit and social engineering.

I also disagree with their implication that these cases impact the "business environment" because the cases are precedent for far more widespread, class-driven implementation.

The judges and plaintiffs in these cases are implementing the type of activist lawfare that law students have been taught for years in many law schools around the country. These tactics have spread throughout the system in both criminal and civil courts. 

It's possible that the US Supreme Court will intervene based on the 8th or 14th amendments, but so long as the law schools promote this type of lawfare, the practice will be normalized in American society and a future Supreme Court will inevitably accommodate the practice.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-and-musk-cases-imperil-the-rule-of-law-new-york-delaware-courts-business-266a5559?st=ysriyjk6d4gwm2l&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

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Elon Musk and Donald Trump Cases Imperil the Rule of Law

American prosperity rests on equal justice. Delaware and New York judges have called it into question.

By Jeb Bush and Joe Lonsdale

Feb. 21, 2024

The U.S. is the business capital of the world in large part because of its robust constitutional system and impartial judiciary. But two unprecedented legal decisions, against Donald Trump in New York and Elon Musk in Delaware, call that into question. In both cases, judges have ordered massive punitive judgments on behalf of dubious or nonexistent “victims.”

Every American has a right to be critical of Mr. Trump’s politics—one of us ran against him in 2016—or Mr. Musk’s public persona. But equality before the law is precious, and these rulings represent a crisis not only for the soundness of our courts, but for the business environment that has allowed the U.S. to prosper. If these rulings stand, the damage could cascade through the economy, creating fear of arbitrary enforcement against entrepreneurs who seek public office or raise their voices as citizens in a way that politicians dislike.

In Delaware, Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick of the Court of Chancery ordered the unwinding of five years of Mr. Musk’s incentive-based compensation at 

Tesla

, which had been approved by 80% of the company’s shareholders. The plaintiff, Richard Tornetta, held nine shares in 2018—worth about $200 then and $2,000 today, after the execution of the compensation plan that supposedly injured him.

Mr. Musk’s compensation plan awarded him stock bonuses tied to earnings and stock-value benchmarks, which many critics thought he could never meet. When he did, he received $56 billion, enriching shareholders like Mr. Tornetta along the way. Judge McCormick has yet to say how she wants the pay package unwound, but Mr. Tornetta’s lawyers could petition her for a percentage of the $56 billion as a fee for having succeeded in their challenge. Mr. Musk’s performance at Tesla enriched all shareholders, but Judge McCormick’s ruling may primarily enrich Delaware trial lawyers.

In New York, Judge Arthur Engoron ordered Mr. Trump to pay more than $350 million in a civil fraud judgment for inflating the value of his real-estate holdings. That case was brought by Attorney General Letitia James, who ran for office in 2018 on a promise to target the man she called “an illegitimate president.”

The unusual New York law Ms. James used to investigate and sue Mr. Trump didn’t require her to prove that he had intended to defraud anyone, or even that anyone lost money. The Associated Press found that of the 12 cases brought under that law since its adoption in 1956 in which significant penalties were imposed, the case against Mr. Trump was the only instance without an alleged victim or financial loss. Bankers from Deutsche Bank, which lent money to Mr. Trump, testified that they were satisfied with having done so, given they were paid back on time and with interest. They also testified that they were uncertain whether the alleged exaggerations would have affected the terms of the loans to Mr. Trump—a key part of Ms. James’s case. Since there were no victims, the state will collect the damages.

New York and Delaware have played an outsize role in business in the U.S. Many major companies are incorporated in Delaware owing to the state’s body of corporate legal precedents; and a significant number of banks operate in New York, the world financial capital. The appellate courts in those states now have a chance to review these dangerous judicial rulings and try to stop further damage to the reputations of their respective judiciaries.

If they don’t, blue-state politicians may have the satisfaction of “sticking it” to Messrs. Trump and Musk, but the loss to those states will be significant. The damage to the legal fabric of the country will be even worse. A dispassionate justice system is at the heart of American exceptionalism, and the country will be poorer if we lose it.

Mr. Bush served as governor of Florida, 1999-2007. Mr. Lonsdale is a founder of Palantir and managing partner of 8VC.

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Related to this is Jonathan Turley's observation about the confiscatory nature of the New York Statute and the fine imposed by the corrupt, political judge.

https://jonathanturley.org/2024/02/21/nothing-succeeds-like-excess-new-yorks-perverse-incentive-in-pricing-trump-out-of-an-appeal/