In the highly partisan swamp of D.C., Paul Manafort’s biggest crime was being Trump’s campaign manager. Michael Cohen’s crime was being Trump’s lawyer. Cohen got off easy when he agreed to turn on Trump for a potential violation of campaign spending laws. As the judge said, prosecutors pressure witnesses to “sing, or compose.”
Keep in mind that Obama had over $2 million in similar campaign finance law infractions and that high profile, wealthy men like Trump are targets of women like Stormy Daniels all the time. They get paid off when they threaten reputations. It’s very common. In fact, right now, Omarosa is on the loose once again, trying to find a wealthy man who is high-profile enough for her to claim he said the “N-word.”
For anyone paying attention, the takeaway from all this is the frantic and political manner in which government is spending our tax money to “get” Trump. Mueller’s investigation was supposed to be about Russian collusion. Now it has turned into The National Enquirer.
Now, fittingly, Mueller’s tabloid investigation has given immunity to National Enquirer Chairman David Pecker. Mueller hopes to squeeze him for information to get Trump on a procedural campaign finance disclosure violation. I guess if you are Trump and someone has to roll over on you, it’s a good thing it’s not Chris Christie.
If you give the ex-FBI Director $40 million, a big hyper-partisan Democrat donor staff, and all our laws-layered-upon-laws, they will get 90 percent of us if they want to. We’ve created a hyper-partisan governmental vigilante police state.
What should worry us all — Democrats included — is this: Is this the legal system we want, one that indicts out of political vengeance? If political grifters like Manafort and Cohen committed crimes dating back to 2006, why didn’t our crack law enforcement get them before now? And how does Cohen not pay taxes on $4.5 million in taxicab income in a supposedly heavily regulated business?
Cohen was Trump’s fixer. All Trump needed was a heavy, who, through hook or crook, could silence all his paramours of the past to advance him politically. One needs experience in this dirty arena so, rather than blasting Hillary Clinton, he should have hired Madame Secretary.
By weaponizing criminal law for political gain, this “Special Counsel” is about to spend $40 million to indict folks in Trump’s universe. And has Mueller taught us anything? Oh, we get it: Trump digs chicks.
Special Prosecutor Mueller is now investigating obstruction of justice on a “Russian collusion” crime that never happened. The “investigation” has morphed into a TMZ-like joke. Stormy Daniels is raking in the money. She just introduced her new perfume, “Collusion.” You put it on, rub your wrists together, and you smell just like you tripled your appearance fees at strip clubs.
One positive thing has happened with all this legal/political theater: Now everyone on Facebook has a law degree.
Democrats and Republicans are bickering so much that we citizens feel like teenagers whose parents are going through a nasty divorce. But you have to hand it to Trump. In all this chaos, he is holding the country and his marriage together. In the South, we call this “good people skills.”
The FBI, long given immense and unaccountable powers to arrest and ruin American lives on a whim, is finally facing some real consequences of its own hubris. Future genuine prosecutions will be damaged by the bad acts of Messrs. Strzok, Comey, McCabe, Rosenstein and Ohr, and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page. It will take years to repair the reputations of the FBI and DOJ. We realize now that the presumed reverence for these organizations we are conditioned to believe was misplaced.
Even liberal lawyer Alan Dershowitz says, “Criminalizing political differences hurts democracy.” We must stand up to politically motivated prosecutions. Should America die next week, the police investigation would say there were no signs of struggle.
A syndicated op-ed humorist, award-winning author and TV/radio commentator, Ron may be reached at Ron@RonaldHart.com or on Twitter.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.