Democrats’ Lawfare Proves Politically Impotent, Likely to Come Back to Haunt Them

Josh Hammer / June 07, 2024

Nearly 14 months after the first of four unprecedented criminal prosecutions against former President Donald Trump commenced in earnest, the Democrat-lawfare complex got its man: The Soviet show trial in “Justice” Juan Merchan’s dingy New York City courtroom produced its preordained “guilty” verdict.

It is perhaps hackneyed to observe that, in convicting and seeking to incarcerate a former president and current leading presidential candidate, we have “crossed the Rubicon.” Well …

Did we not cross a Rubicon when the demonic Obama administration sued the nuns—yes, literal nuns—of the Little Sisters of the Poor to try to force them to subsidize abortifacients?

Did we not cross a Rubicon when Democrats threw out 4,000 to 5,000 years of “innocent until proven guilty” civilizational norms to try to derail the U.S. Supreme Court confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh?

Did we not cross a Rubicon when then-vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris solicited funds to bail out anarchic Antifa-Black Lives Matter street hooligans?

Did we not cross a Rubicon when the American Stasi—sorry, the FBI—raided Mar-a-Lago over a document dispute?

Did we not cross a Rubicon when myriad Trump attorneys, including the renowned scholar John Eastman, were prosecuted for practicing the legal profession?

Did we not cross a Rubicon when Peter Navarro or Steve Bannon (just now) were ordered to jail?

The Rubicon, truthfully, is a shallow, inconsequential river in Italy. That it is so shallow helps explain why Julius Caesar was able to cross it so easily. At this juncture in American history, it no longer suffices to speak of crossing a Rubicon. We are now rapidly crossing great seas—perhaps even circumnavigating the globe. You might call President Joe Biden and the rest of the Democrat-lawfare complex our modern-day Magellans.

Ruinous or not, however, their precedent has now been set. And that raises the obvious question: For Democrats, will all of this, and especially their multifront anti-Trump lawfare, prove to be worth it?

That obvious question, in turn, has an equally obvious answer: absolutely, positively not.

First, Democrats do not seem to be getting much of a bump in the early polls after last week’s verdict. In each of the two major national polls that have been conducted exclusively after the verdict, from pollsters Emerson College and Morning Consult, Trump leads by one point. As even the liberal Washington Post conceded on Thursday, “Other polls conducted before and after the verdict suggest between no change and a two-point shift toward Biden. The shifts are quite a bit smaller than pretrial polls suggested they could be.”

Considering that Trump was already leading in most national horse race polling and that the Republican Party currently has a built-in Electoral College advantage wherein its presidential candidate can slightly lose the popular vote while still prevailing in the electoral vote, the Biden-Harris campaign ought to be worried.

Democrats’ lawfare isn’t winning over many swing voters.

Former President Donald Trump sits in the courtroom May 30 during his since-ended “hush money” trial in New York City. Democrats got their preordained “guilty” verdict, but there’s no evidence it gave them the polling bump they hoped for. (Photo: Michael Santiago/Getty Images)

Second, the damage the Democrat-lawfare complex has caused to the American public’s faith and trust in the justice system is simply astronomical—and likely irreparable. Even prior to the onslaught of Trump indictments filed last year, many of us “deplorables” were already convinced we have a two-tier system of justice in this country: Consider the wholly disparate prosecutorial treatment of the BLM-Antifa rioters and the “J6-ers” present during the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol jamboree, for instance.

But the Democrat-lawfare complex’s serial overreaches have now removed any doubt as to the blatant impartiality and patent unfairness of our regnant legal order. It is impossible not to be jaded or cynical. Leviticus 19:15 commands: “You shall commit no injustice in judgment; you shall not favor a poor person or respect a great man; you shall judge your fellow with righteousness.”

Does anyone think this describes America today?

Third, the Right finally seems to be snapping out of its long lull and beginning to gear itself for pitched battle against a domestic foe that wants to punish us, prosecute us, subjugate us, and remove us from the entirety of American public life. That portends poorly for leftists.

My friend John Yoo, the Bush-era Justice Department official and law professor normally a bit less pugnacious than yours truly, opined: “Repairing this breach of constitutional norms will require Republicans to follow the age-old maxim: Do unto others as they have done unto you.”

Megyn Kelly, the influential broadcaster who has had a complex relationship with Trump going back to the 2016 GOP presidential primary, said after the verdict: “I’m going to utter words I never thought I would utter in my life: We need Steve Bannon.” The famously combative Bannon appears headed for an unjust four-month prison sentence in a few weeks, but her point stands.

Democrats have no idea what they have unleashed. Perhaps worse, they don’t even care.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.