The Patriot Post® · (Mis)Trust

There’s good news and bad news about being off the grid for a couple weeks. The good news is that when you are scuba diving, the boats don’t have cable, and when you are under water, the fish matter more than partisan politics. You are really off the grid. The bad news is that there have only been about 6,437 main events that have happened in that time frame, and deciding on which to comment on now is a real challenge.

I thought about the continuing decline in trust in our justice system. Take Michael Flynn. No question he lied to the feds, but why did he do that when the subject was action he took that was perfectly legal? Maybe the Occam’s Razor on this one is that he “misremembered,” as the FBI first indicated, or that he was so concerned about the Logan Act and forgot his intel training that someone is always listening that he thought he could skate by without revealing a contact with the dreaded Russians, which might be embarrassing in today’s climate but not illegal. Both are unlikely, so it is what it is. But we have a highly regarded military guy whose life is now ruined by a process crime related to a non-criminal activity. Go figure. True, he brought it on himself, but really? Considering Hillary Clinton’s multiple FBI deceptions and evidence destruction, Flynn jaywalked by comparison.

Who knows where this leads, but it is interesting that none of the folks Mueller has nabbed to date has anything to do with the original purpose of the investigation, namely to find out if there was collusion between Trump and the Russians during the election, which after 18 months of intense scrutiny has yielded zero on that front. No wonder that the focus of the millions in expense is morphing to process crimes and the gigantic stretch of Logan Act violations or obstruction of justice. Not exactly helping that warm and fuzzy feeling of trust in our institutions.

And then we get the revelation, which the FBI tried to hide from Congress, that the key FBI investigator in both the Hillary email probe and the Trump collusion reviews is a Trump hater and Hillary supporter. He has been shuffled off to a position in HR at the FBI, but the damage has been done to both the credibility of those probes and the FBI in general as an institution. J. Edgar must be turning over in his grave. At least he was an equal opportunity extortionist; he had files and photos on folks from both sides of the aisle.

And speaking of the justice system, can anyone explain to me what happened in San Francisco? The illegal immigrant who killed Kate Steinle was acquitted of first- and second-degree murder as well as involuntary manslaughter but convicted of firearms possession by a felon. Of course, that is so totally illogical that the only explanations are either jury nullification or a black helicopter laundry list of conspiracy theories. Perhaps the district attorney (DA) threw the case or deliberately overcharged to generate sympathy for the defendant instead of doing his job. But the more likely bottom line is that a jury of liberals wanted to stick it to Trump’s immigration policies. Another Exhibit A on why, if you can help it, one should never, ever put oneself at the mercy of the U.S. justice system.

I have no problem that the defendant’s immigration history was excluded. The case should rely on the facts of the events only. But testimony showed that he was negligently waving the gun around before it went off, so while he probably didn’t “target” Kate in a first- or second-degree sense, what he did was the textbook definition of negligent homicide or involuntary manslaughter. He first said he “found” the gun and was aiming it at “sea animals,” not Kate, when he fired the weapon three times. He then changed his story to claim that he “stepped on” the gun, causing it to go off three times and then got scared, picked up the gun, ran away and threw it in the bay. I guess that admission led to the “possession” conviction, but there is no way that the weapon went off by itself. I own the same weapon in .357 and can guarantee you that it requires a trigger pull to discharge. The idea that it went off from stepping on it is preposterous. Whether it was because of the DA or the jury, the entire justice system took a huge hit. If politics is allowed to overturn the rule of law without the judge stepping in, what judicial process can we trust?

And speaking of trust, I realize it’s hard for an institution with trustworthy stats in the high single digits to do something to lower those numbers, but ABC News gave it its best shot the other day. As Flynn was preparing to plead guilty, an ABC reporter went on air with the claim that one of his sources had told him that Flynn was going to say that he was told by Trump to contact the Russians while Trump was a candidate. The mainstream media went nuts with glee, as this undercut everything Trump had been claiming. The markets tanked 350 points and speculation ran wild about when Trump would be impeached. The only problem was that the statement by the reporter was utterly false; Flynn was told to contact the Russians after the election, a couple weeks prior to the inauguration, which was normal and customary. Fake news at its peak. After most of the day, ABC issued a statement that it was really sorry for the mistake and that it hadn’t “passed their normal editorial process.” Oops. Can we just move on?

Of course, this is ridiculous. For over a year, the primary mainstream media story has been how Trump colluded with the Russians. So we are supposed to believe that when a story pops up that might validate their preconceived notions and be the straw that brought down the administration, they don’t vet the stuffing out of it? It didn’t just slip through; it was a deliberate attempt by ABC to be the one that first reported the event that crashed Trump. The reporter gets a month-long suspension, and the rest of the media sweeps the entire matter under the rug. Disgraceful, but not surprising. It’s a further push of the media toward an approval rating of zero. In one week, we have seen the total nuking of trust in both the media and the justice system. Way to go guys.

I could go on to taxes and the pending government shutdown, but let’s leave those for another day and conclude with a comment on sexual harassment. We have reached feeding frenzy status on this subject in a very short time, and as with most stories that get momentum from the Internet, the pendulum is likely to swing too far the other way. I hope we don’t wind up taking the attitude I heard from one female reporter who gushed that it was perfectly fine for innocent men to get caught up in the furor because for too long women had been the targets, and turnabout is fair play. The whole area of sexual harassment is far more complicated, and I may look at it differently from most.

I see it as a spectrum of actions from clear violations of the law at one end to boorish and insulting (but not criminal or even a violation of institutional norms) behavior at the other. Those and everything in-between need to be treated on their own merits. Rape and other forms of physical assault are clear crimes, and the perpetrators should be prosecuted to the fullest extent. Workplace sexual harassment is next. Using power to coerce sexual favors comes close to physical assault and at times crosses the line to criminal activity. But regardless, actions designed to wield power over subordinates, or create a hostile work environment, are unacceptable, and those engaging in that should lose their jobs and be held at least civilly liable. I make a clear distinction, however, when it comes to simple boorish behavior outside the workplace. Catcalls by construction workers fit that. It might be disgraceful behavior, but it’s not criminal or workplace related.

To put specifies on each category, the Harvey Weinsteins of the world are accused of physical assault as well as workplace coercion. The former should get them prosecuted. Bill Clinton and folks like John Conyers are poster children for workplace sexual harassment. They are men of power who used that power to influence subordinates, and in Conyers’ case, used taxpayer money to cover it up. I am one of the few conservatives who consistently argued in the ‘90s that impeaching Bill Clinton was a gross overreach and would only serve to generate sympathy for him and paint the GOP as radical partisans. I urged that instead we designate one congressman every day to go to the floor and denounce Clinton as the most egregious workplace sexual harasser in history. There is no way that a sexual relationship in the Oval Office between the most powerful man in the world and a 20-year-old intern can be “consensual.” He should have been shamed out of office, not impeached.

Conyers is a tough one. As Pelosi said before she read the polls and changed her mind, he is an “icon” for his civil rights work. That is absolutely true — he was a big part of changing the world for the better back in the '60s and '70s and should be remembered for that. The totality of one’s life should matter, not just one phase, so giving him credit for past accomplishments is appropriate. But it is also appropriate to call him out for abusing women in his office and wasting taxpayer money covering it up. Having said that, elected officials, unlike corporate executives, answer to a higher authority than some phony congressional ethics committee. It is known as the voters. I am appalled at what Conyers did, but it is up to his constituents to decide his fate, not Pelosi. I would hope he finds a way to bow out without completely trashing his life’s work, because if he makes the recent controversy front and center, that’s all he will be remembered for, and that would be a shame.

Ditto with Al Franken, only he gets an even bigger benefit of the doubt. True, he acted like a jerk, but it was not in his office and not a demonstration of power over subordinates. He simply showed ridiculous character with constituents and colleagues — boorish in the extreme, but not illegal or workplace harassment. Get it all out, and let the voters decide. But forcing him out of the Senate is absurd. Is his behavior any worse than senators taking bribes from constituents to influence the use of the power of their office? Oh, that’s right, I forgot. The other guy got a hung jury on that one.

And actually, ditto with Roy Moore. However credible the accusations and however dubious his emphatic denials, we have charges of bad behavior (one or two of which could conceivably have been criminal) from 40 years ago, with faded memories and no evidence but he said/she said. Moore has been through numerous elections and these accusations are just surfacing now that he is potentially in a position to support the Trump agenda. At minimum, they are as questionable as they are disturbing. But due to the statute of limitations, we only have the impact of what this says about his character in the election. And again, it’s up to the voters to decide. If he wins, that should be it. Just as Pelosi has no business bouncing Conyers, the GOP should not bounce an elected Moore.

We run the risk of having normal interactions between men and women characterized as criminal. Perhaps if we had more confidence and trust in our institutions to be able to separate the criminal from the boorish, and recognize the totality of one’s character in determining whether a friendly compliment or pat on the shoulder was coercive or just being supportive, we could ignore the froth and treat people as people. I hope that as the frenzy fades we can get back to that.