Democrats and their friends on the left are hoping against hope that the Supreme Court rules that Donald J. Trump possesses only limited immunity for his presidential actions and is thus subject to prosecution by the Biden administration as well as local and state prosecutors.
As the ancient adage proclaims, be careful what you wish for.
Unless the Supreme Court constructs a bulletproof ruling that shields presidents from endless prosecutions for official acts performed while in office, when elected this fall, Donald J. Trump suddenly will have the power to investigate a wide range of controversial and questionable actions taken by Biden and other previous presidents during their time in office.
There used to be a “constitutional norm” that immunized ex-presidents from prosecution by their successors.
However, Biden administration agencies, including the DOJ, FBI, and DHS, have decided to ignore this centuries-old constitutional norm and wage widespread and unfettered lawfare against former president Donald J. Trump and his supporters. In doing so, they have fundamentally changed the rules of political engagement in America.
On a recent Sunday Futures program hosted by Maria Bartiromo, Eric Trump cautioned that without immunity, former presidents could face endless prosecution. “Joe Biden won’t have one foot outside the White House doors before they begin to go after him ruthlessly,” predicted Eric Trump.
President Trump’s DOJ could “go after Joe Biden for having cocaine in the White House” as well as “raiding his opponent’s home.” Eric Trump suggested that the DOJ could even investigate Biden “for depleting the strategic petroleum reserve two weeks before the primaries in order to boost his standing by lowering gas prices.”
He speculated that the DOJ could pursue charges against former president Obama for “Fast and Furious, where he gives 2,000 weapons to cartel members.” He speculated that the Trump administration could even “go after George Bush for lying about weapons of mass destruction.”
Stephen Miller, a former senior adviser in the Trump White House, suggested that “if they say there’s no immunity for official acts, the moment Joe Biden leaves office, every single red-city and red-state D.A. in the country can charge him for financial crimes related to illegal student loan bailouts … war crimes related to deaths of service members overseas … human-trafficking, human-smuggling and, by the way, more election interference than you can even count.”
The Trump DOJ could certainly investigate the possibility that the Biden administration adopted a soft, accommodative approach to our global foe China to protect and enhance Biden family’s financial dealings with that country. The same questions could be raised regarding Biden’s overly protective stance on Ukraine. Would anyone be shocked if the Trump DOJ next spring raids the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement at the University of Pennsylvania, searching for evidence of Biden’s self-serving political policies towards these and other countries?
Jim Jordan’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government recently issued a report claiming that Alvin Bragg has been under political pressure from the Biden administration to pursue charges against President Trump on the bookkeeping “hush money” controversy. The report holds Biden culpable for attempting to interfere in the election by keeping his opponent in court.
Prominent legal expert Mike Davis, the former chief counsel for nominations for the Senate Judiciary Committee, has repeatedly stated that the Biden White House, as well as the offices of Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Fani Willis, and the Arizona A.G., are all involved in “clearly coordinated lawfare and election interference” actions aimed at violating the civil rights of Trump, his aides, and his supporters. By bogging Trump down in court cases, the Biden administration hopes to hamper his ability to campaign effectively.
According to Davis, years ago, Barack Obama, while president, put the machinery in place to weaponize the Justice Department and U.S. intelligence agencies against Democrats’ political adversaries.
To get to the bottom of this criminal conspiracy, Davis says, the House should subpoena former prosecutors like Andrew Weissmann as well as Judges Merchan, Engoron, and Chutkan who oversee what many view as biased prosecutions of the former president and 2024 Republican candidate for president.
He predicts that soon after President Trump is inaugurated on January 20, 2025, his acting attorney general will open a probe into “a criminal conspiracy to interfere in the election.” Davis is calling for “the most severe legal political and financial consequences” for those involved in this blatant election interference.
Davis sees Mark Pomerantz, an attorney instrumental in pressuring Bragg to prosecute Trump in the N.Y. case, as “the weak link to incriminate others” when the Trump DOJ begins its investigations. In his May 2023 congressional testimony, Pomerantz pleaded the Fifth when asked if he broke any laws or violated anyone’s constitutional rights or New York State Bar rules during the Trump investigation.
Davis exhorts House Republicans to grant Pomerantz immunity to speak so he can reveal what he knows about the efforts of the Biden regime and Biden himself to interfere in the 2024 election.
Congressman Jim Jordan reiterated on Fox’s Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo that “Alvin Bragg and Jack Smith are in a conspiracy to impact the 2024 election. And Fani Willis is part of this effort as well.”
Already, the hunters are becoming the hunted. Due to pressure from the GOP base, Representative Jim Jordan’s House Weaponization of Government committee is opening an investigation of whether former Biden administration lawyer Matthew Colangelo’s leading role in the Bragg New York trial is further evidence that Biden is using these trials to interfere in the 2024 election.
Also, N.Y. representative Elise Stefanik is demanding that the DOJ investigate various legal chicanery by Jack Smith. Things are already heating up around Smith — he stands accused of evidence-tampering in the Mar-a-Lago Presidential Records Act dispute.
House speaker Mike Johnson recently stated that “the Biden administration is weaponizing our justice system to target President Trump. It’s election interference. It’s borderline criminal conspiracy. American people see right through it. It has to stop.”
Now Missouri attorney general Andrew Bailey announced that he plans to use the Freedom of Information Act to pry loose from the DOJ any information related to “activity and/or communications between Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith or Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis related to the investigation or prosecution” of former president Trump.
“The investigations and subsequent prosecutions of former President Donald J. Trump appear to have been conducted in coordination with the United States Department of Justice,” Bailey states. Bailey’s Exhibit A is the role former third-highest-ranking DOJ official Matthew Colangelo is now playing in Manhattan D.A. Bragg’s criminal case, N.Y. v. Trump.
Americans understand that the Democrats and their minions in the DOJ, the FBI, the DHS, the IRS, and other alphabet agencies have abused their powers and violated constitutional norms that go back well over 250 years to prosecute Trump, his lawyers and advisers, and even his grassroots followers.
The American people are demanding accountability and expecting Trump to finally return American governance back to its constitutional roots.
Only by holding accountable those responsible for violating our constitutional norms can we hope to preserve America’s legal traditions.
After all, no one is above the law.
Sociologist Michael G. Zey, Ph.D. is the author of Ageless Nation, Seizing the Future and The Future Factor; professor, Montclair State University (retired). www.zey.com. twitter.com/futurist3000 Facebook.
Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.
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