Silencing the roar of Trump’s legal troubles: Biden’s missed opportunities lawyer scrgruppen

In our hyper-polarized nation, inflammatory or anti-democratic as well as anti-rule of law rhetoric has been flowing from former President Donald Trump and revolving around the four criminal indictments, 91 felony counts, and an implicit GOP presidential bid for 2024. The nomination has already narrowed the upcoming election between Current President Joe Biden and his rival Trump have come to the question of whether the United States will remain a democratic republic or become another fallen illiberal democracy.

After in Second GOP debate On a Wednesday night that highlighted the dominance of Donald Trump and the irrelevance of the rest of the so-called Republican candidates, there was absolutely no mention of the threat to American democracy that will be the deciding issue in the 2024 presidential election.

There was no discussion or even mention of the topic A devastating ruling on Tuesday Against Trump and his family, confirming what lawyer Michael Cohen – Trump’s former coordinator – testified before Congress on February 27, 2019, that the “business empire” was nothing more than a racket. Or in the judge’s words, “fraudulent fiction” and the accumulation of one lie after another. Included:

Rent-controlled apartments were valued as if they could fetch market prices; The Westchester estate is worth about $30 million Nearly $300 million; Nearly $200 million stake on Wall Street A skyscraper valued at more than $500 million; Golf: $16 million Courses valued at more than $50 million each; Evolution in Scotland has agreed to have nearly 500 homes valued as such It contains more than 2000 homes; Mar-a- is strictly restricted to verbs Lago’s Florida property was assessed as if there had been no deed restrictions; And so on and so on.

When the judge tallied the total fraudulent dollars involved, he found that “the financial condition of Trump’s companies was overstated by at least $800 million –

And perhaps more than $2 billion, suggesting that Trump’s total wealth was less than $1 billion and that he would have difficulty collecting the $250 million in fines demanded by New York State.

The conspicuous absence of this usual Trump Organization lawlessness was not only on the other Republican candidates, but also, of course, on the missing, unasked questions about these fraudulent claims by the three Fox News executives.

This was generally the case with the media as a whole, as well as with President Biden, his representatives, and the Democratic Party to a lesser extent.

In short, Sleepy Joe and the rest of the Democratic Party should not ignore the wide array of alleged state and federal crimes committed by Trump and his allies before and during his term as president as well as after. Nor should they want the GOP to walk away from the 35-page partial summary ruling New York Judge Arthur Engoron In what is likely the largest fraudulent civil lawsuit ever filed against a family-owned business, the Trump Organization.

After all the failed appeals of Trump and his sons Eric and Donald Jr. for their many years of defrauding New York banks, insurance companies and taxpayers, the end result will amount to a “corporate death sentence” for the family real estate businesses.

However, will Trump, who will be banned from doing business in New York State for at least five years, still be able to run US businesses if he is elected in 2024?

Hence, these matters should be front and center in the Biden-Trump contest that actually began three months before the meaningless GOP primaries were scheduled to begin — assuming they were not canceled out of irrelevance to this electoral political process.

So far, the Democratic strategy of silence surrounding Trump’s myriad civil and criminal violations has been a dismal failure and could cost Biden a second term in the White House.

So far, most media outlets and political bodies alike have not taken seriously the threats posed by Trump and the existential realities facing American democracy. As Molly Jung Fast wrote in reference to the 2016 election Vanity gallery Earlier in the week, “Let’s not sleepwalk into another Trump presidency.”

Once again this week, for example, the balanced and short-sighted media was busy asking all Democratic senators whether or not they supported the resignation of their colleague Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, who has now been indicted on bribery charges. As of Tuesday evening, I think that number was 21 out of 26.

However, few if any media outlets bothered to ask Republican lawmakers whether they supported Trump’s idea of ​​using the death penalty over the so-called disloyal conduct of former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley. Or whether those same GOP lawmakers go along with NBC and MSNBC owner Trump’s desires Comcast investigated for ‘threatening treason’ and “their intentionally corrupt and dishonest coverage of people, things, and events.”

I think Trump is confusing NBC with Fox News, which recently paid $750 million to do precisely that. This lack of mental acuity on Trump’s part is no different than when “stable genius” was disconcerting recently. Bush’s wrong brother in the Iraq war Or discuss his defeat Barack Obama instead of Hillary Clinton in 2016, among two of his recent gaffes during his election campaign.

Unfortunately, if and when 4y Finally, the estates and the public as a whole are beginning to address the problem of “saving democracy” at its source, and the chaos and anarchy that Trump and his supporters are experiencing has yet to be seen as the ambitious authoritarian regime Trump envisioned. One thousand nine hundred and eighty-four Perhaps it is already too far removed from the American psyche.

Since Trump announced his 2024 candidacy late last year, he has been calling In order to end the constitution In his real social posts. If elected president next year, Trump has vowed revenge against his real or imagined political enemies, as well as promising pardons for many of his fellow insurrectionists.

Trump didn’t just bring up the idea of ​​a motor mouth The country’s highest-ranking general was executedBut he also promised to “appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the country’s history, Joe Biden,” as well as “the entire Biden crime family” as part of his campaign. The legal basis for erasing the independence of the Ministry of Justice of the presidency and achieving his overall goal of “total obliteration.”[ing] deep country.”

Meanwhile, Biden has remained largely silent on the subject of any of Trump’s criminal indictments or his numerous civil liability convictions rather than taking the lead on these matters or going on the offensive as a way to try Defending the rule of law.

Regarding the four criminal indictments, Trump was asked Prosecutors and/or judges should refrain From using Truth Social to intimidate “defendants, witnesses, or victims,” from “tainting jury pools,” or from “attacking prosecutors and judges” in his various ongoing attempts to obstruct justice For example Mob like behavior.

And because the media, Republicans, and to a lesser extent Democrats, have been giving Trump a virtual pass on these crucial questions of due process and equal protection, the issue of democracy versus tyranny has actually been somewhat watered down, if not completely distorted. As reported by NBC News and shared on Morning Joe on September 26, 2023.

In response to the only question asked before and after the criminal indictments against Trump and Biden’s son Hunter, which “political party you trust most to protect democracy,” the results were: Before the indictments, Democrats had 40 percent and Republicans had 33 percent. percent; After the charges were filed, the percentage of Republicans rose four points to 37 percent and the percentage of Democrats decreased four points to 36 percent.

An appropriate description of these outcomes might be something like “peace and order in peace” or should I say “comfort in violence”? In any case, the hands-off strategy of the Biden White House and its Democratic allies regarding Trump’s criminal charges was a tactical error. However, there is still some time before it is too late to reverse this silent apathy.

Instead of being absent from political action and remaining silent about the most important criminal indictments in US history, Biden and his associates should have all along leaned toward these criminal charges as much as possible, or at least half of what Trump and his aides did. They were leaning toward the false impeachment of Joe Biden or Attorney General Merritt Garland.

Biden and his surrogates must also push back against Trump and criticize him every time he engages in outlandish rhetoric, disinformation, and strongman behavior. By not doing so, like the media and the Republican Party, the Democratic Party is also giving Democracy’s top destroyer a free pass for his corrupt and illegal behavior, as they too are unwittingly helping to normalize this type of illegal practice. behavior.

As a contributing editor to New York Magazine Ankush Kharduri As he wrote, Biden and his cronies were downplaying the seriousness of Trump and his cronies’ crimes by:

They publicly act as if they don’t exist, and fail to get their needs met A moment for the American people and the history books. For example Biden should assume primary responsibility for basic presidential leadership and constitutional responsibility To try to help the public understand the how and why of these situations It was brought in by his Justice Department and they were trying to put it together The broader political, legal and historical context. Instead, he and his therapists They unwittingly feed into the right-wing trope that Biden is absent A president unable to lead the country even at the simplest levels level, including speaking out on matters of state and national importance Historical concern.

This should be a teaching moment for the American people. And a golden opportunity for President Biden and his delegates to deliver all kinds of lessons about civil chaos, the administration of criminal justice, and constitutionally appropriate rules of conduct instead of a period of abdication of these democratic responsibilities. Or worse, leave explanations about, say, the “two-tiered justice system” up to hypocritical Donald Trump, House Representatives Jim Jordan and Marjorie Taylor Greene, as well as other MAGA rule-breakers.

The good news is that the Biden White House may have finally taken its first step on Monday of this week to speak out against the former president’s online diatribe. Following Trump’s accusation over the past weekend that retired Gen. Milley had engaged in some sort of “act of treason” that was “so terrible that in times past the punishment would have been death” Trump did. Published on Social TruthThere was finally some pushback from the President of the United States when the wannabe dictator was referring to Milley’s phrase “He reassured his Chinese counterpart in the days following January 6 And the United States will not suddenly attack China.”

Greg Barrack He is Professor Emeritus of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Eastern Michigan University, and is the co-founder of Journal of White Collar and Corporate Crimeand author Criminology on Trump (2022) Who’s Who Sequel, Accusation 45y The President: Leader Trump, the Republican Party, and what we can do about the threat to American democracy It will be published in early 2024.