Op-Ed: Lawfare Will End When the Left Is Too Terrified to Contemplate Continuing It

Now that Donald Trump is headed to the White House, he has to make a decision vital to the Republic’s health. Over the last eight years, President Trump and his allies have been the subject of a non-stop stream of lawfare attacks designed to cripple him while he was president and later, after he peacefully turned over the reigns of power to the addled Joe Biden, to imprison him for what could have been the rest of his life. The campaign to jail him was clearly a conspiracy involving Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis. 

The extent to which the civil cases against him were coordinated with the criminal cases has never, as far as I know, been explored, but it is hard to imagine that it did not exist. This use of the judicial system to attempt to impoverish and imprison political opponents is foreign to the United States and to its founding principles. The decision that Trump has to make is to either ignore the attacks calculated to ruin his life or should he be faithful to the promise he made at CPAC in March 2023, seek retribution.

In 2016, I declared I am your voice. Today I add I am your Warrior, I am your Justice, and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your Retribution.

Andy McCarthy, writing in National Review, makes the case that Trump should end lawfare by ending lawfare.

You don’t have to be an admirer of Bannon or Navarro to see these prosecutions as toxic partisan lawfare. Or to understand how, in the end, this helped Trump with voters — not because Americans have affection for these men, but because the Democrats’ unabashed exploitation of the government’s law enforcement apparatus for their own political advantage was despotic and frightening. It’s not the sort of thing that shouldn’t be done to our side; it’s a betrayal of justice that shouldn’t be done, period, full stop.

Other than being wrong, McCarthy argues that the actions of all public officials have the same immunity that the Supreme Court declared applied to President Trump; see BREAKING: Supreme Court Rules on Presidential Immunity.

And what was that ruling’s rationale? In essence, that if it becomes too easy to prosecute a president for the exercise of his official duties, then the president cannot act as the constitutionally prescribed chief executive, on whose functioning our system of government depends. Hence, what was tacitly understood for nearly a half millennium has now become the express jurisprudence of the nation’s highest court: If a president is acting within the vast ambit of his legitimate executive authority, his actions are presumptively immune; what’s more, prosecutors are not permitted to explore the president’s motives — if his actions are official, a prosecutor may not transform them into crimes by speculating, however plausibly, about the president’s corrupt mind-set. That doesn’t mean there is no accountability for presidential corruption; it means that prosecution in the court system is not the appropriate means of seeking accountability. That is up to Congress and, as we saw on November 5, the voters.

News flash: What applies to the president applies to other government officials as well. They are given government authority because we need their responsibilities fulfilled if our governing system is to function. Ergo, if they have acted within the scope of their legitimate authority, prosecution by the Justice Department is not the answer to allegations that they have exercised their authority for improper motives. Congress can investigate and hold public officials accountable. Federal departments and agencies, including the DOJ and the FBI, have inspectors general who are empowered to conduct internal investigations that can result in termination and lesser forms of discipline. But in the absence of bribery, evidence tampering, subornation of perjury, or a similar, patent crime, the Justice Department has no business investigating federal judges, the House January 6 committee, Jack Smith, Alvin Bragg, or Trump’s other tormentors — not regarding judgment calls in carrying out their undoubted official duties.

Here is where we’d part company. These people tried to imprison Trump for what would have statistically been the rest of his life. They went after the January 6 protesters using a patent over-expansion of the law that the Supreme Court had to smack it down: Supreme Court Hands Down Blockbuster Ruling in Case That Will Impact Multiple J6 Defendants. Even now, Garland’s prosecutors are fighting to extend misdemeanor sentences into terms lasting years behind bars because the Supreme Court repudiated them. 

As recounted in our posts on Garland’s thugs bringing a false and malicious prosecution against a pro-life demonstrator, these people were willing to lie to put their political enemies behind bars and to try and intimidate them (FBI Agents Raid Home of Pro-Life Author With Guns Drawn in Front of His Screaming Kids, New Details of Outrageous FBI Raid on Catholic Activist Mark Houck Shock the Conscience, Justice Department Policy Targets Pro-Life Activists Because Biden Official Has Butthurt Over Supreme Court’s Abortion Decision, The DOJ Has Some Explaining to Do After Video Used to Prosecute Pro-Lifer Is Released, and Federal Jury Blows up Biden Administration Persecution of Pro-Life American Raided by the FBI).

If people in the Department of Justice, the FBI, and other agencies are allowed to walk away from this abuse of power with nothing more than a scolding from some government functionary, then we have ratified the legitimacy of using the federal government’s power to punish political enemies.

To eliminate lawfare as a tool of the left, they have to experience just how horrible it is to be on the receiving end. We need to go after everyone involved in the planning of the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago. Every FBI agent who didn’t call in sick for a 6 a.m. raid on a pro-lifer’s home needs to be fired and sued personally. I think Merrick Garland, Jack Smith, Fani Willis, Alvin Bragg, and Letitia James all need the opportunity to convince a non-DC jury that they did not conspire to violate the civil rights of Donald Trump under color of law. Everyone who touched any of the January 6 cases should be fired. Matthew Graves, the lead January 6 prosecutor, and his deputies, need to be arrested and put on trial, and they need to be hit with a massive personal lawsuit that the US government refuses to defend them from. The DC Jail’s conditions need a federal investigation that results in firings, trials, and personal liability. Some judges in the January 6 trials, particularly those who went along with government overreach on indictments, must be impeached even if they aren’t removed from office. Trump needs to have someone go back to his first term and indict everyone involved in the Russia Hoax.

Just remember, the convictions are icing on the cake. The process is the punishment. A battalion of bankrupted and unemployable DOJ lawyers and FBI agents living in refrigerator cartons under bridges across the country would provide a daily lesson to what happens when you abuse your power and try to deprive other people of their freedom and livelihoods.

Even though Joe Biden is probably not mentally competent to stand trial, he should be arrested and prosecuted for his mishandling of government documents, using the same theory Smith applied to Trump’s circumstances. His business ties with Russia and China must be subjected to the most ruthless proctological exam ever. Joe, James, and Hunter Biden must all be convicted and then pardoned. Just for grins, Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell need a counterintelligence investigation. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger should be tried for mopery; maybe they could be sentenced to being a permanent display in a museum in Dubuque, Iowa.

Only when we’ve plowed the soil of the Deep State with salt can we talk about a truce. But the personal damage we inflict over the next four years, in terms of jail time, bankruptcies, and legal judgments, must so terrify that second tier of Deep Staters that no matter what another batch of Democrat operatives cook up, they will refuse to get involved.