The Patriot Post® · Overhauling U.S. Justice

Last week, we all — political leaders and media on both sides, along with the American public at large — took a momentary break from the crazy twists and turns of the 2024 presidential race and registered our profound disgust at the mistreatment of an American citizen at the hands of the Russian government. Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, working on assignment in Russia, was arrested and jailed in March 2023 for suspected espionage. After a perfunctory three-day closed hearing last week, he was convicted and sentenced to 16 years in a Russian maximum security penal colony.

It was all a sham — a legal proceeding that may have looked like a real trial but actually had little to do with justice and everything to do with achieving a preordained political outcome.

Evan Gershkovich is not a spy — he is a well-respected professional journalist, employed by a world-class publication, working out in the open with proper credentials. The Russians’ objective in this charade is not yet clear, but the process has worked for them before. Their arrest, trial, and conviction of WNBA professional basketball star Brittany Griner for possession of a minute quantity of cannabis led to a prisoner swap and netted them release of a notorious international arms dealer.

And so, our outrage is well placed.

One might think that the episode shines a light on the fundamental differences between American justice and what passes for justice in the former Soviet Union. The whole world knows that we are the nation that provides liberty and justice for all. We proclaim loudly and often that in our country, there is equal justice under the law; our justice system goes the extra mile (or the extra 10 miles) to ensure due process for defendants. Our Lady Liberty wears a blindfold.

But hold on: Doesn’t that sham trial sound eerily familiar? Where else have we seen that recently? The answer, of course, is right here at home, where politically motivated legal attacks have become a cottage industry for Biden administration zealots intent on remaining in power.

Exhibit A is the indictment, trial, and conviction of Donald Trump on 34 felony counts of election finance law accounting violations — certifying the first-ever felony conviction of a former president.

I’ve written several lengthy columns on this sorry episode. A cursory review: The underlying crime was actually a single unproven misdemeanor accounting violation that was five years past the statute of limitations, resurrected by a Trump-hating district attorney, and tried before a conflicted, hard-left judge and a deep-blue Manhattan jury pool. Due process went out the window with the judge’s refusal to allow testimony from an expert witness (the former director of the Campaign Finance Commission) who was prepared to testify that the accounting treatment in question was entirely proper.

The outcome — conviction on all counts — was a foregone conclusion. What a coup!

That’s not the only U.S. sham trial. Exhibits B and beyond are the multiple other civil and criminal cases targeting the former president. And don’t forget the civil and criminal cases successfully prosecuted against several Trump associates, resulting in exorbitant fines and/or jail time.

Trump opponents like to characterize the legal blitz as the unfortunate but necessary consequence of lawless behavior on the part of the former president and his allies. We can spout “equal protection under the law” all day long, but it’s funny how they all seem to go one way, and all are timed for maximum exposure in this election season.

They call it lawfare, and it is a poisonous abuse of our judicial system.

And for pure numbers of politically motivated trials, consider the now 1,400-plus convictions of all who participated, even in trivial ways, in the January 6 Capitol riot, while the FBI continues even today to track down and prosecute participants.

To be clear, our government’s J6 response is a very different matter than the administration’s election-interfering lawfare campaign against Trump. But it is yet another example of grand-scale legal action, pressed by our own government, largely — and perhaps entirely — in service of political advantage. Is it equal justice under the law? Hardly.

In a decade of civil unrest — including the 2020 summer of George Floyd riots (dozens of deaths, untold injuries, and billions in damage to public and private property) and the ongoing pro-Hamas, anti-Semitic protests (violent confrontations with police, physical intimidation of Jews, defacing monuments, and even flag-burning) — arrests have been rare and convictions even rarer. As one example: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who dedicated a year to “getting Trump,” generously dropped charges against most of those arrested for forceful entry and occupation of a Columbia University building.

In stark contrast, anyone who set foot in the U.S. Capitol on January 6 has been trapped in an entirely different universe — a three-year FBI dragnet and strong-arm charges. And like the fate of Evan Gershkovich, nearly all have led to conviction and severe punishment.

The rationale — excuse, actually — for the heavy-handed treatment is the administration’s continuing insistence that J6 was an actual insurrection, a very real attempt to overthrow our government, the greatest threat to our nation since the Civil War. That, of course, is pure malarkey (a favorite Joe Biden term) — a wholly political narrative intended to cement in the public mind the evil posed by a Trump return to power.

And finally, there is the crowning absurdity of President Joe Biden’s rollout yesterday of his remedy for what ails American justice. He proposes sweeping “reform” of the U.S. Supreme Court that is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and that has served us so well for more than two centuries.

Biden is correct: Our justice system is in dire need of repair. But the obvious repair requires no constitutional amendment, and not even congressional action.

Mr. President, please leave the Supreme Court alone. And stop using the Department of Justice as your own personal political SWAT team.