River News: Our View

It is not an exaggeration to say that the American justice system is corrupt, and has been for a long, long time.

We’d say the proof of it goes all the way back to O.J. Simpson’s not-guilty verdict, based apparently on the color of his skin. Of course racial profiling works both ways: Black Americans have been unfairly profiled, arrested, and incarcerated for generations by what we call “the brotherhood of justice.”

In this world of “justice,” it’s easy to find complicit juries who will convict one of their “peers.” In the American South, all-white juries routinely convicted innocent blacks of all sorts of crimes. Heck, that’s the plot line of one of America’s classic novels, To Kill A Mockingbird. 

Everybody knew the convictions were bogus; but they were a way — often the only way — for the establishment to get its way, short of a public lynching.

So it’s no surprise that a jury of Trump-hating New Yorkers would convict Donald Trump of 34 felonies. Just as in the novel, just as in the Simpson trial, everyone knows the books were cooked. Trump’s just lucky there aren’t a lot of trees in Manhattan.

And it will be no surprise when Hunter Biden skates from consequences by a jury from Delaware, with Jill Biden sitting in the front row every day to remind the jurors just who they are judging.

What is surprising is that Democrats are incredulous that the Trump convictions haven’t tanked him in the polls. In the early surveys after the conviction, Trump lost a point or two, but remained in a statistical tie with Biden, while the latest polls show Trump steady or gaining.

An Issues and Insights (I&I)/TIPP poll after the verdicts put Trump and Biden even at 41, but that’s a gain for Trump over the previous poll before the verdicts, when Biden led by 2 points. And independents still break for Trump 38-26.

If Democrats are incredulous that a guy convicted of 34 felonies could still be in the running, it’s actually incredulous that anyone would believe that the president is really guilty of 34 felonies for misclassifying a pay-off to a porn star. 

Whatever the ethics of the situation, there simply was no law preventing Trump from paying Stormy Daniels for silence, and yet, and yet, somehow Alvin Bragg went from no crime or a bookkeeping misdemeanor to 34 felonies.

Thirty-four felonies! Seriously?

The truth is, Americans know that the American justice system, and we use the term loosely, is rigged. 

The deck is stacked against us and anyone who dares to tell the truth or think the wrong thoughts.

Americans are standing behind Trump because, for better or worse, he’s the only impediment to the broad persecution of Americans everywhere. As Trump warns, the government is already coming for people on every level at an ever accelerating pace.

As we recount in this edition, for example, the government came after the Little Rock airport director for violating gun licensing laws. For that, they broke down the doors to his home in the early morning hours and shot him dead in the head. 

But Bryan Malinowski was just the latest to join a long list of assassinated patriots.

Along with the Trump trial, it was a shot heard round the world: Don’t cross the government. 

So it’s a mistake to think the government won’t come for you. And that explains Trump’s robust poll numbers, not to mention his record-shattering fundraising in the aftermath of the convictions. That’s why some Democrats have been calling on New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to pardon Trump as a way to take his post-conviction momentum away.

Yes, MAGA is alive and well. Unfortunately, the country is not.

None of which is to say Biden is toast. Democrats have a will and a way to win close elections, by hook or by crook, and Republicans are monumentally incompetent or complicit or both, and so Biden could well win a second term.

But it won’t be because the American public loves Joe Biden’s policies. They don’t like the inflation that gouges them at the grocery store; they don’t like the forever wars; they don’t like the ongoing invasion of our country through open borders.

And they don’t like a government that tells them to shut up, or else.

Indeed, if Biden wins it will be because an increasingly corrupt American system gifted him the election. Because of the verdicts, his presidency will be illegitimate by definition.

There are of course good folks in law enforcement and in the courts. There are great sheriffs and judges; but there are also judges, locally and nationally, like the despicable and thankfully former judge Mary Roth Burns, who suggested that non-whites could not get a fair trial in Oneida County because of systemic racism.

There are ideologically evil juries like those in the Jim Crow South and like those who convicted Trump and those who exonerated O.J. Simpson.

The truth is, the system has been trashed. The American republic has already fallen, and the guilty verdicts in New York were just the latest demonstration.

Only two things can save the republic now. One is a Trump win. If he wins, there will be hooting and hollering from the left about ways to stop him from taking office, but it will be a sign that the American people have finally had enough. Constitutional restoration will be the order of the day.

If he doesn’t, the political scene must shift to state and local jurisdictions. Conservatives will have to mobilize the grassroots but they will have to do more — they will have to finally play the same brutal games the Democrats play.

That means, wherever possible, conservatives must also engage in lawfare, target progressives, and cook up crimes that they can be sure reliable juries will convict. If Trump loses, only that kind of ruthless engagement can save us. 

It’s not a savory thought, and it’s no way to litigate public life, but at that point conservatives will have to fight to survive.

We just hope Trump wins instead.

Either way, a day of reckoning is coming and a jury in New York made sure that that day is not far away.