Trump entitled to appeal verdict, but attacking justice system makes him a menace

Grounds for appeal are not signs that the courts are corrupt

Former President Donald Trump should be careful about attacking the justice system in the wake of his conviction of 34 counts of felony falsification of business records.

In a great  irony, that system may be the only way he can dodge, at least for a while, a felony record. 

His continued insistence that the system is corrupt and rigged against him is further evidence of how intent he is on discrediting  one of the most important pillars of a free society. His vitriolic rhetoric flies in the face of his avowed support for law enforcement, and it undermines the sanctity of the rule of law.

He shouldn’t be trashing the system just because he disagrees with the outcome.

Predictably, following the unanimous verdict by 12 jurors on May 31, Trump angrily lashed out at the prosecutors, the judge, the U.S. Justice Department, President Joe Biden and even the location of his trial in Democrat-dominated Manhattan. 

Most of his complaints don’t hold a drop of water. Trump has presented no evidence of corruption or collusion. Still, legal scholars say he has several potential grounds for appeal,  such as questioning the neutrality of the judge,  the nature of the charges and the instructions to the jury and the allegedly prejudicial detailed testimony of  porn star Stormy Daniels. 

None of these, however, suggests unsavory acts on part of the justice system. Just because some court ruling or action is appealable does not render it corrupt. The rhetorical distinction here is important.

The prosecution, like the defense, plays to win and will seek any advantage it can get.  Appeals are part of the system and are a safeguard against justice gone awry. Trump should be glad that these are in place, not vow revenge on the system because he lost.

His contention that Biden was involved is absurd. Biden has no say over a state court, where Trump’s hush money trial took place. Prosecutors in Manhattan don’t work for the U.S. Justice Department or any White House office.

If the sitting  president could rig that trial, certainly he could easily have protected his son Hunter Biden who is facing trial on federal gun charges. If he rigged the system against Trump, Biden would have risked political suicide if he were found out.  

Trump also complained he could not mount a defense that he was following the advice of his lawyers to pay $130,000 in hush money to Daniels, who testified that Trump had sex with her in Lake Tahoe while he was married in 2006. Trump’s own lawyers decided not to mount  such a defense — because it would have required disclosing all attorney-client communications, a prospect that I cannot imagine Trump would want to face.

Trump’s complaint that he was tried in Manhattan ignores the U.S. Constitution’s  mandate that a person be tried by a jury of his peers where the alleged crime occurred.  It does not say that jurors must agree with a  defendant’s politics. The electorate is so divided about Trump that seating a impartial jury would be a challenge anywhere in the nation.

Two points are important to remember here: 

One, 12  jurors agreed unanimously on all 34 counts of falsifying business records with intent to conceal another crime. That’s 408 separate decisions jurors agreed to, a remarkable outcome.  At the end of the day, whatever is said about the politics of all this, a dozen Manhattanites found Trump’s conduct felonious.

Two, those jurors arrived at a decision quickly, in about nine hours, despite the complexity of the case — and the knowledge that Trump’s supporters would pillory them, try to publish their identities and threaten them. Their verdict took courage as well as acumen.

Trump is entitled to exhaust all the legal remedies he is entitled to. But he is not, given the complete lack of evidence, entitled to pillory the system as corrupt.  His rhetoric emboldens extremists, including Southwest Washington congressional candidate Joe Kent, to shout that the verdict is evidence that America has become a “banana republic.” 

On the contrary, it is their cries for violence and upheaval that are the hallmarks of a banana republic:  A nation with a broken government that no longer honors the rule of law. 

Do the people who glibly advocate civil war understand what they’re talking about? Neighbors against neighbors. Random acts of violence.  Jungle warfare. Deaths of children, grandchildren, grandparents, mothers, co-workers. There would be no borders or heroes in this  war — just war criminals, war victims and an America plunged into chaos, bloodshed and economic and civic decline.

That is NOT making America great again.The heroes of Normandy did not fight and die for America to turn against itself.

In the coming weeks and months, the public will be inundated with debates about legal appeals and jostling among the prosecution and Trump lawyers.  That’s as it should be. But remember this: 12 jurors who pledged to be impartial found that Trump, despite his denials and refusal to testify, committed adultery with a porn actress and paid her off to prevent word from getting out to voters just before the 2016 election.

There was a time in America that such a revelation would have destroyed a politician’s reputation and career.  But America itself has changed,  and for the worse. That is part of the reason for the reply I gave to my daughter when she asked what I thought of the verdict.

“I’m saddened, gladdened and troubled,“ I told her.  Glad that the system treated Trump like the criminal that he is; saddened  that the country will continue to be rent by his self-serving rhetoric; troubled that so many people still believe in a man willing to sacrifice the nation’s — and just about everyone else’s — interests for his own.