Your honors, sirs and madams, Messrs. Merchant, Engoron, McAfee, Kaplan, Honorable Judge Ms. Cannon:
I am a juror in the Trump case before you. I am a witness, too. And a clerk. And the child of the judge, the spouse of the prosecuting attorney, a second cousin of the bailiff.
This defendant, you know him. He rolls his biker gang of attorneys into the courtroom, scattering burning sparks amongst the papers brought against him, heedless, justifying wickedness and condemning all who stand up earnestly to give their plain, true testimony, or who labor to give him his fair day in court to counter the charges against him.
He demands of you judges and your courts not justice, but deference to whims and whines, acquiescence to threats and falsehoods. He insists you agree that partiality instigates all of that which does not benefit him. He muses aloud about violence if things do not go as he desires. He casts “fairness” as synonymous with his wishes.
He has earned gag orders in several of your courts. He has been instructed not to insult, wrong, or incite others to lay hands on anyone who may come to work in the court, or serve, or testify.
That is good. But at the same time, everyone seems to agree he will persist in insulting, wronging, and inciting. He will drop the name or address of a witness or a juror. He will wonder aloud how such a deranged or evil person can be allowed to continue perverting justice. When he does, what will the courts do?
Not very much they can do, according to the Reasonable Voices. I mean, he’s the former president, isn’t he? And a candidate of one of the major parties. You can’t just throw someone like that in jail. Wouldn’t bringing so harsh an action against his attacks on the justice system further damage a system ironically already damaged by his attacks? That is what the Reasonable Voices say.
But that’s not what we say, we the bailiffs and witnesses and jurors and clerks and children. We say when you look the other way, when you decline to render consequences equal to what any other defendant would face under like circumstances, what you say to us is “You are on your own. We will not act to protect you.”
When one of the crazies comes for us, and scares us into not testifying or ruins us or hurts us or kills us or someone dear to us, you’ll have announced you will do nothing to stop them, though you knew they were coming for us and you knew why, and you possessed the power to stop him from calling them to action.
You know what is right. Do it.
Or else speak your intentions out loud. Call the jurors, clerks, witnesses, spouses, and children into the courtroom. Sit them down and tell them, listen, you people: We choose not to protect you.