The ‘Prosecutor vs. the Felon’ Canard
Democrats have a seemingly desirable election matchup, but their hypocrisy is incredibly shameless.
Special Counsel Jack Smith, the man tapped on constitutionally dubious grounds to prosecute Donald Trump for mishandling classified documents and attempts to overturn the 2020 election, including the supposed “insurrection” on January 6, 2021, is back in the news.
On Monday, Smith appealed U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s July ruling tossing his classified docs case on grounds of Smith’s appointment being unconstitutional. At a minimum, appealing to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals keeps the case in the news during election season.
Then, on Tuesday, Smith refiled his revised election indictment of Trump in light of July’s major Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity. Essentially, the Court ruled that presidents have wide latitude to conduct official business.
Smith certainly isn’t trying to “respect and implement the Supreme Court’s holdings,” as he claims in his superseding filing. Instead, he’s using a few cosmetic changes to effectively challenge the justices to do something about it. The goal is the same as the Democrat Party’s: undermine the Court’s credibility. That’s why, as former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy notes in an excellent column digging into Smith’s case, “Trump is still charged with the same four crimes — conspiracy to defraud the United States, a civil-rights offense, and two counts of obstructing Congress.” About the only portion Smith dropped was accusations regarding Trump’s use of the Justice Department.
Trump argues that the DOJ “violated its own policy” regarding election interference by taking this action just before voting starts on September 6. Indeed, Smith’s plan in both cases isn’t so much to win convictions before the election but to saddle Trump with bad news and legal expenses for the duration of the campaign.
That brings me to my larger point: Democrats aim to win the election by branding the already twice-impeached Trump as a “convicted felon,” who, even better, now faces former prosecutor Kamala Harris.
It’s the “prosecutor versus the felon” election, a framing that became a prominent theme for various speakers at the Democratic National Convention.
Democrats must’ve hardly been able to believe their good fortune when Trump was found guilty of all 34 trumped-up felony charges in New York. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has established himself as a guy who loves to reduce or drop charges against felons in New York, but boy, once Trump was the one in the prosecutorial crosshairs, a couple of inconsequential misdemeanors suddenly became 34 felonies and — voila! — Trump was a “convicted felon.”
That set up the second part. As planned, Joe Biden was kicked to the curb to eliminate Trump’s best chance of victory, and the 81-year-old cognitively disabled president was replaced with former San Francisco District Attorney, California Attorney General, and current Vice President Kamala Harris.
Smith’s prosecution is all part of the lawfare strategy to select Trump as the GOP nominee and then beat him again. As far as Democrats are concerned, the best part of that is the “prosecutor versus felon” branding.
But there’s a big caveat: Democrats generally love and support felons.
“The prosecutor versus the felon is the kind of glib expression that’s perfect for an election-year bumper sticker,” opined MSNBC’s Jarvis DeBerry. “However, the suggestion that a ‘felon’ is inherently and permanently untrustworthy makes for a heaping helping of hypocrisy from a party that has rightly identified overcriminalization, mass incarceration and voter suppression as systemic problems.”
“Rightly”? Anyway.
DeBerry continues, “To label him a felon and use it to mean unfitness is to suggest that all ‘felons,’ by their very nature, are bad and irredeemable. A political slogan can’t communicate every nuance. But at a minimum, it shouldn’t send a message inconsistent with the party’s stated values.”
“Values”? Anyway.
DeBerry’s rationale for opposing Trump and Republicans more generally is certainly suspect, but insofar as he is only observing Democrat priorities, he has a point.
Democrats caterwaul about labeling people “felons” or “illegals” because they want to minimize breaking the law as an identity. For a party obsessed with identity, this is a strange but cynically useful ploy.
Moreover, yes, Harris jailed hundreds of people in California for things even she now says shouldn’t be punishable crimes. But she also advocated a bail fund for Minnesota’s Black Lives Matter rioters, and the administration she has worked for since January 2021 pardoned roughly 6,500 federal convicts of simple marijuana possession.
Democrats are also doing everything they can to make sure convicts vote. Do you think they’d be doing that if convicts voted Republican?
To put this all in a neat little package, the same Democrats who support and foment lawlessness are feigning outrage at one particular man over the flimsiest accusations of lawbreaking. Clear-thinking Americans see the hypocritical game for what it is. Unfortunately, Democrats play the game because it works — millions of Americans will vote against Trump, thinking they’re supporting law and order when precisely the opposite is the case.
