On Wednesday, the former special counsel at the Department of Defense, Ryan Goodman, was interviewed on CNN to give his legal expertise on the subject of Donald Trump. Goodman was brought on to talk about the analysis he and others have done on the last 15 years of legal history in the United States, specifically around district attorneys’ offices. Even more specifically, Goodman analyzed the number of times, across the entire country, district attorneys’ offices “brought this particular charge, falsifying business records,” against people.
Goodman says his research shows that “essentially, if the person's last name was not ‘Trump,’ he would be charged.” This is the opposite of what the right-wing narrative in the country has been over the last week or two, since Donald Trump all-capped a cry of MAGA distress, saying he was about to be persecuted. In the conservative bubble, Donald Trump is the forever victim of political witch-hunterism.*
As Goldman goes on to explain: There is a never-ending set of data points showing that a Trump indictment wouldn’t be unique at all, except that he is a corrupt billionaire former president. “It just happens time and again, it's commonplace to charge this kind of a crime. If the evidence is there, it's very compelling. How does a prosecutor turn away from that? Treating everybody equally under the law would mean you bring an indictment if you have the evidence.”
*Not to be confused with the which-Hunter-Biden-penis-picture-should-we-investigate-ism practiced by fetishist Reps. James Comer and Jim Jordan.
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CNN legal expert Laura Coates was also on the panel. She pointed out that not only is there a long-standing national history of charging people when you have compelling evidence again them, but there is also very recent history in this very case. “When you look at this, there has been somebody who has been charged under the common nucleus of the facts—Michael Cohen.”
In fact, Coates reminds viewers, it was Trump’s attorney general, Bill Barr, “who really frowned upon what he perceived as a political persecution in the courts when related to Michael Cohen, as opposed to the actual substance of the issue.” The second part of Coates’ point is that we forget that law enforcement at every level have to make decisions about what to enforce and when to enforce it:
“Look, think about it as if you're driving down the highway. Most people probably are speeding, and the cops are seeing you as well, they decide who to pull over and they decide that based on who might be the most egregious or beyond. Here, this might not fall in the egregious category compared to January 6th and beyond, but a prosecutor has the ability to bring a case if a crime has been committed without regard to the other things that may have happened around it.”
The bogus right-wing argument that the prosecutorial discretion being exercised here is egregiously political is so very rich coming from the political party that spent years and months and tons of money “investigating” Hillary Clinton when she wasn’t running for president. This is the same outfit that is now investigating Hunter Biden’s penis, and Joe Biden’s very difficult personal struggles supporting a son with a lot of issues, for as long as they feel is politically purposeful.
We will have to see if they take this same tack with the possible indictments coming out of Georgia’s prosecutors in the next few weeks.
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