The Patriot Post® · Leftists Train Judicial Saboteurs
“Send a message.”
That was defense attorney Johnnie Cochran’s direction to the jury during closing arguments in the O.J. Simpson criminal trial, and the message was unmistakable. His client was guilty as hell — from the bloody, pigeon-toed size-12 Bruno Magli footprints at the crime scene and in his Ford Bronco to the blood-spattered socks on his bedroom floor — but Cochran wanted the jury to ignore all that evidence and “send a message.” He wanted the jury to nullify an inescapable verdict. And they did.
That was the first time I’d ever heard the term “jury nullification,” but I knew it wouldn’t be the last. Even to my untrained, non-legal mind, it seemed to open up a Pandora’s box of sinister possibilities.
And sure enough. As if Washington, DC, weren’t already a dangerously rigged town, a Soros-funded group called Freedom Trainers has been teaching left-wing activists to deceive and connive and slither their way onto federal juries convened by the Trump Department of Justice in order to nullify their verdicts. According to the group’s website, “We train people in the proven tools of collective noncooperation — the same strategies that have toppled authoritarian regimes around the world.”
Ah, so Trump is an authoritarian, right up there with Mao and Stalin. Welp, at least they didn’t call him a fascist.
Freedom Trainers. Get it? Maybe I’m giving them too much credit, but these jury-nullifying leftists seem to be borrowing equity from the Freedom Train of the post-World War II era, the patriotic train that toured the country from 1947-49 with a spectacular cargo of American history: the Declaration of Independence, George Washington’s personal copy of the Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Gettysburg Address, and more.
But while the Freedom Train’s goal was to reinvigorate a weary citizenry about “the American way of life” and steel it against the growing threat of communism, these “Freedom” Trainers aim to wreck the American Experiment and disillusion its citizenry by destroying our foundation of justice.
The name “Freedom Trainers” is thus a funny, not-funny misnomer. Every free society requires a reliable foundation of justice, and these leftists are working furiously to undermine that foundation. It’s an utterly diabolical scheme — wide-scale jury nullification on the sly — and it doesn’t seem to run afoul of the law, at least not directly.
As The Washington Free Beacon’s Thomas Catenacci reports:
A pamphlet produced by the group makes the point more clearly: Attendees, it says, can vote not guilty for “any reason you believe is just.” The pamphlet emphasizes that jurors can vote against conviction “even if the technical elements of the crime were technically met. No explanation required. No punishment allowed. Totally legal.”
So the Trainers extoll the virtues of nullification, but they caution against being truthful about it. They add: “You can legally nullify once on a jury, but if you say that’s your plan, you’ll likely be removed before the trial begins. … If you simply vote not guilty and don’t explain your reasoning, your verdict stands — no one can force you to convict or overturn your decision.”
In other words, Do your best to deceive them. Saul Alinsky must be beaming with pride.
Freedom Trainers says it “has trained hundreds of thousands of committed people across the United States.” Yikes. And these anarchists — let’s be honest, that’s what they are — must feel pretty confident that they’re on firm legal footing. As Catenacci notes, “Freedom Trainers encourages activists and trainees to pass out copies of the pamphlet at courthouses on Monday mornings ‘before people are placed on juries.’”
I wonder, though. There are many words on the Freedom Trainers’ bulleted list of “Tips for Being Selected,” but only one of those words is bolded: the word “not” — as in, “Do not mention jury nullification or any jury education you’ve received.”
“Dark-money networks are intent on attacking the judicial system at every level,” says legal expert Carrie Severino, “with their latest scheme to sway juries and encourage citizens to nullify the law. It wasn’t enough for Soros and dark-money groups to back far-left prosecutors who released criminals and led to rising crime or to push judges who ignore the rule of law. These latest attempts challenge the constitutional right to an impartial jury and, even worse, encourage citizens to bypass laws passed by our elected representatives. This is just one more aspect of the legal system these extreme groups are trying to infiltrate.”
So it’s despicable, but is it illegal? That’s the question. Because if it’s not, and if jury nullification becomes a thing, we’re in big trouble.
“I thought it was tragic,” said Daniel Petrocelli, the intrepid attorney who won a civil trial against O.J. Simpson after the criminal verdict was nullified. “In one of the most disgraceful, cynical, and socially irresponsible defenses ever used to set a guilty man free, [Simpson’s defense team] created the race issue and exploited it.”
Similarly, these disgraceful, cynical, and socially irresponsible Freedom Trainers have exploited Trump Derangement Syndrome. And in doing so, they’ve taken a sledgehammer to the foundation of our Republic.