Does anyone believe progressives would accept a conviction of President Joe Biden based on a trial in rural Alabama presided over by a judge who donated to Donald Trump, whose daughter worked for conservative advocacy firms, and whose chief prosecutor was the third highest ranking official in Trump’s Department of Justice?
Progressives were elated last week when a jury of former President Trump’s supposed peers in New York City convicted him on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records in an attempt to conceal some other unspecified crime, presumably having to do with corruptly influencing the 2016 election. It had only taken nine years and an entire menagerie of other accusations, from colluding with Russia to steal the election to leading an actual insurrection against the United States, but they’d finally gotten their man, one way or another, and were not likely to let the moment pass without comment, nor were they likely to consider what their thoughts might if the roles were reversed. Does anyone seriously believe progressives would accept a conviction of President Joe Biden based on a trial in rural Alabama presided over by a judge who donated to Donald Trump and related groups, whose daughter worked for conservative advocacy firms, and whose chief prosecutor was formerly the third highest ranking official in Trump’s Department of Justice? We cannot, of course, prove a hypothetical, but we can certainly question the integrity of those now duly informing us that we need to respect the verdict when the very same people label any outcome they don’t agree with as fundamentally illegitimate. In fact, we saw this play out just last week, ironically as the Trump verdict was being announced, when progressives were enraged that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito refused calls to recuse himself from any January 6th related cases. His crime? Flying an upside down flag after a dispute with a neighbor. “I had no involvement in the decision to fly that flag,” the Justice wrote explaining his decision. “I was not aware of any connection between that historic flag and the ‘Stop the Steal Movement,’ and neither was my wife. She did not fly it to associate herself with that or any other group, and the use of an old historic flag by a new group does not necessarily drain that flag of all other meanings.” In response, The New York Times brought in an entire team to question the decision, literally “Experts Question Alito’s Failure to Recuse Himself.” Democrat Senator Sheldon Whitehouse claimed his failure to comply with their wishes required Congress to take more control over the Court. Congressman Jaime Raskin, meanwhile, has some vague plan to force Justice Alito to recuse himself – along with Clarence Thomas.
Demands for Justice Thomas to recuse himself are, if anything, even more frequent that Justice Alito. In April, it was over the presidential immunity case. As CNN described it at the time, “Amid calls for Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from a high-stakes case over whether Donald Trump has presidential immunity from criminal prosecution, the conservative jurist has made clear that he doesn’t plan to step aside – or even respond publicly to the appeals from Democrats and others.” In March, The Hill opined on the same case, “Clarence Thomas’ conflict is clear – he must recuse himself.” After noting that “Thomas has a clear conflict of interest in the case and needs to recuse himself now,” they concluded “whatever the court’s previous track record, too much is at stake both for the country and the Supreme Court to let Justice Thomas turn a blind eye to his ethical and legal obligation to recuse himself from the Trump immunity case.” In February, Democrats similarly called on Justice Thomas to recuse himself from the 9-0 decision overruling Colorado and other states attempts to unilaterally remove President Trump from the ballot. Such is their fervor for recusal in general and longstanding belief that a conservative’s default position should be recusal, that even when they do actually recuse themselves from time-to-time, it’s framed as evidence of their guilt of something. Last October, Reuters described Justice Thomas’ decision to recuse himself from a case involving an attorney on Trump’s team related to January 6 was an “attempt at damage control and little else.” “Justice Clarence Thomas recently recused himself in a case related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, but given his prior apparent indifference toward major questions of judicial ethics, the move strikes me as too little, too late…In a sense, the justice’s recusal came in the case that mattered the least.” Needless to say, the requisite experts were brought in to proclaim the recusal lacking. “There would certainly appear to be an inconsistency in light of his failure to recuse in the earlier” cases, explained James Alfini, dean emeritus at South Texas College of Law. Stephen Gillers, professor emeritus at New York University School of Law, agreed. “I certainly do not attribute Thomas’s decision to a change in his narrow interpretation of the recusal statute,” he explained. “I do not believe he ‘got religion.’”
This religion is unique to conservatives, of course, because now we have no reason whatsoever to be concerned that a judge presiding over the first in the nation’s history trial of a former President donated to that President’s opponents and related causes, and whose daughter does lucrative consulting work with progressive firms. Cases do not get more historic and given the upcoming election, more influential than this, but when former aide to President Bill Clinton, George Stephanopoulos interviewed Trump attorney Will Scharf last weekend, he simply dismissed these concerns by noting, “The ethics panel for the state of New York said the judge was not required to recuse” – and then deflected to Justices Alito and Thomas even though they are not required to recuse themselves for any reason either. Similarly, neither Mr. Stephanopoulos nor most other mainstream media commentators are remotely interested in how the third highest ranking official in the Department of Justice ended up as the lead prosecutor for a local case, a highly unusual demotion unless you consider the potential for coordination between the Biden Administration and District Attorney Alvin Bragg. After all, Mathew Colangelo almost certainly knows President Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland personally. It is far from likely that he would have left the Justice Department without informing both men why and what he’d be doing next, making it rather safe to assume he agreed to lead the prosecution of their chief political opponent with their blessing. This seems doubly true given that Mr. Colangelo had no special experience with the specific charges against Trump or white collar crime in New York City in general. He is, however, a Democrat partisan who previously worked for President Barack Obama and was consulting with the Democrat party as recently as 2018. He has also worked on previous cases involving President Trump, which makes the situation even more incestuous. Prior to joining the Biden Justice Department, Mr. Colangelo worked for New York Attorney General Letitia James on her civil crusade against the former President’s business holdings.
Incredibly, this means that Mr. Colangelo participated in an anti-Trump legal initiative launched by an official who ran a campaign based on targeting Trump, was elevated by President Biden and Attorney General Garland to the Department of Justice, then went back to New York to prosecute the former President personally. As President Trump himself put it, “Remember this. Colangelo was a DOJ guy. He’s a Biden DOJ guy. Why is he in the Manhattan DA’s office trying the case? That in itself is a conflict.” Making things appear even worse, it was reported that District Attorney Bragg had decided to not to charge the President until Mr. Colangelo got involved. As Trump’s lawyers noted, “I think the timeline is really important. He’s in one of the premier legal posts in America, and he suddenly quits his job, goes to become a line prosecutor in the New York DA’s office, and then almost immediately thereafter, the zombie case comes back to life.” Does anyone truly believe the President wasn’t aware and supportive of this every step of the way? After all, Mr. Colangelo only offered him full access to two of the three pending legal matters against his opponent in state court. (In the Georgia election interference case, the disgraced prosecutor actually made trips to the White House.) Somehow, however, this same person sitting on both sides of the table is not supposed to arouse any suspicion at all. Indeed, the media regularly scoffs at the notion that President Biden was involved, claiming there is “no evidence” except for Mr. Colangelo himself, of course. Mr. Stephanopoulos put it this way, “Of course, the attorney general of Manhattan has nothing to do with the Department of Justice.” When Trump’s attorney shared the facts and disagreed, “I vehemently disagree that the district attorney in New York was not politically motivated here, and I vehemently disagree that President Biden and his political allies aren’t up to their necks in this prosecution,” Mr. Stephanopoulos threatened to end the interview. “There’s no evidence here of that sir… I’m not going to let you continue to say that — there’s zero evidence of that.” What more evidence could anyone need than a single figure involved at the state and federal level, and multiple meetings at the White House?
As we have seen before, standards of evidence magically become stricter or looser depending on the matter at hand. Whenever President Biden is accused of something, the media will only accept spy photos catching him in the act, or in this case a recorded conversation of him, District Attorney Bragg, and perhaps Letitia James. When President Trump is involved, however, standards no longer matter and we’re simply supposed to convict a former President on the word a porn star and man who’d been convicted of perjury. We are also not supposed to ask how a misdemeanor that wasn’t prosecuted federally magically becomes a felony years after the statute of limitations is up, a felony which by law requires the definition of another underlying crime. Even CNN’s legal analyst, Elie Honig, wasn’t impressed. After noting that “the DA’s charges against Trump push the outer boundaries of the law and due process. That’s not on the jury. That’s on the prosecutors who chose to bring the case and the judge who let it play out as it did,” he continues to detail the many reasons the case is likely to be overturned on appeal. First, “The charges against Trump are obscure, and nearly entirely unprecedented. In fact, no state prosecutor — in New York, or Wyoming, or anywhere — has ever charged federal election laws as a direct or predicate state crime, against anyone, for anything. None. Ever. Even putting aside the specifics of election law, the Manhattan DA itself almost never brings any case in which falsification of business records is the only charge.” Second, “Inexcusably, the DA refused to specify what those unlawful means actually were — and the judge declined to force them to pony up — until right before closing arguments.” I would also add the egregious decision to allow Stormy Daniels to testify, the refusal to allow expert defenses witnesses to explain the underlying charge, and the ridiculous instructions to the jury, but clearly there is enough here that, should the shoe be on the other foot, we can all imagine what the reaction would be from some of the many same people. Perhaps I should say “when” the shoe is on the foot because at this point it is only a matter of time before an enterprising Republican prosecutor brings charges against a Democrat in their district. It doesn’t take a genius to conclude they will be saying the exact opposite on that particular day. After all, Democrats have been failing the Trump test since day one.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 