Victor Davis Hanson

The Fall of the House of Presidential Persecutions

Another excellent essay from Hanson; After demolishing each and every one of the political witch trials that have been used by the left since Americans had the temerity to elect Trump president in 2016, VDH sums up:

What will be the endgame of all these attacks on the American legal system and the warping of it for blatant political purposes?

One, we have entered new territory. There will soon be hundreds of local and state prosecutors who feel they have now been given license in election years to go after national presidential candidates for political advantage, both local and national.

Two, conservatives are in a dilemma: whether to restore deterrence by boomeranging the left’s extra-legal effort to ruin a candidate and president or to refrain from what would be a descent into third-world, tit-for-tat criminalization of politics.

Three, the persecution of Trump, coupled with the derelict candidacy of Joe Biden, threatens to erode the traditional base of the Democratic Party and redefine politics in terms of class rather than race. Minorities are beginning to empathize with the gagged, railroaded, and victimized Trump while distancing themselves from the victimizers, who are using their “privilege” to warp the law on behalf of a bullying president.

Four, the U.S. has lost a great deal of credibility abroad due to the erosion of what was once seen as the greatest system of jurisprudence in the world. No longer.

Enemies like China and Russia now boast that America’s new political prosecutions are similar to their own systems, or even more egregious, and will welcome us into their own customs of bastardized justice.

Latin-American, African, and Asian dictators are delighted that the U.S. has lost the moral authority to lecture them on the need for a disinterested and independent judiciary and the rule of law.

Our democratic allies in Europe and Asia are increasingly disturbed that the instability and unlawfulness apparent in the current lawfare put into question the reliability of the United States and its adherence to a rules-based order—whether at home or aboard.

Any president who would sic the justice system on his opponent might be equally vindictive and lawless to his allies abroad.