The Left's evisceration of our justice system
The left is systematically dismantling our justice system through lawfare against conservatives. Leftist judges who dominate the legal system are currently focused on eviscerating Donald Trump, by taking him down in politically motivated, groundless criminal and civil lawfare. They are getting away with it in part because the general populace does not understand the complexity of the legal system; meanwhile, conservative attorneys are horrified at seeing years of our once great jurisprudence destroyed.
These judges are eliminating the right to a jury trial, which is so fundamental to liberty that it predates the U.S., going back to the English Magna Carta of 1215. Last week, a New York judge divested Trump of his entire company without even granting him a trial first. Judge Arthur Engoron, a Democrat, claimed in a pretrial ruling awarding partial summary judgment to prosecutors that Trump inflated his net worth between 2014 and 2021. This type of decision by a judge should be made after all the discovery and disclosure of evidence has been produced in a trial, not before. It is a very murky area.
New York Democratic Attorney General Letitia James, who has targeted Trump for several years, said Trump and his associates used the valuations to obtain favorable treatment. James ran for attorney general five years ago, campaigning to investigate the "con man." Rules 3.6 and 3.8 of the New York Rules of Professional Conduct for attorneys make it very clear that prosecutors are prohibited from making "extrajudicial statements" that "can create the additional problem of increasing public condemnation of the accused." Yet nothing has happened to her.
Engoron's order canceled the certificates of the key businesses behind Trump's empire and set up a fast timeline to dissolve the Trump Organization and its connected entities. He revoked the licenses for some of Trump's flagship properties, including Trump Tower and the Trump International Hotel. He claimed Trump had a "propensity to engage in persistent fraud."
Engoron also awarded sanctions against Trump's attorneys of $7,500 each merely for including defenses in their pleadings. I've never seen or heard of that before. Engoron claimed that Trump's attorneys repeatedly brought up those defenses in pleadings, which were "frivolous." How can he rule they're frivolous when the actual trial hasn't even started yet?
James is asking for $250 million and a ban on Trump running businesses in the state, including a lifetime bar on the Trumps from serving as officers or directors in any New York companies, and a five-year bar on Trump or his company from entering into any real estate acquisitions.
Trump attorney Christopher Kise said in a written statement that there was "zero evidence of any default, breach, late payment or any complaint of harm," and said the opinion disregarded the testimony of those who said there was no fraud, like nationally recognized experts from the NYU Stern School of Business. Trump intends to appeal. The civil trial began Monday.
This is consistent with the left's increasing abuse of summary judgment by leftist judges to stick it to conservatives. The Democrat-appointed judge who handled the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News did the same thing, forcing a nearly $1 billion settlement. He granted a summary judgment motion for Dominion, which resulted in jury instructions stating that all of the statements made by attorneys Rudy Giulliani and Sidney Powell, as well as all negative claims made on the network about Dominion, were false. So there's no way a jury would have found for Fox News based on that.
Former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas observed, "By not letting the jury decide this central question about the 2020 elections … [the judge] delivered a fundamental attack on the right to a trial by jury." Fox's attorneys told the media they believed they could've won on appeal, but Fox declined to pursue one.
Similarly, Democrat-appointed Judge Lewis Kaplan torpedoed the defense in the sexual abuse case filed by Jean Caroll against Trump. Trump's attorneys documented the bias, which included repeated negative comments to bias the jury. I covered the first three sham indictments of Trump here. Politico has a list of the upcoming lawfare against Trump, too lengthy to list here.
This evisceration of our justice system in order to destroy conservatives started in earnest several years ago. In 2017, corrupt DOJ prosecutors went after former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio for criminal contempt. The Democrat-appointed judge refused to allow him a jury trial, claiming there is no right to a jury trial since the potential sentence was only six months incarceration.
The Constitution says nothing about this limitation; it was carved out by a U.S. Supreme Court decision. Nevertheless, Bolton could have granted him a jury trial and chose not to. One of Trump's first acts as president was to pardon Arpaio.
It is a brilliant strategy by the left to use their now Democrat-dominated legal system to take down the right. The law has become so complicated that it takes an immense effort to try and understand and follow every proceeding targeting a conservative. Conservative attorneys who understand it don't dare risk speaking out and explaining the atrocities for fear of being disbarred. State bars adopt their professional rules for attorneys from the American Bar Association, which contains an unconstitutional rule prohibiting attorneys from criticizing judges.
Since it's nearly impossible to remove corrupt judges from the bench, largely due to low information and a legal system dominated by the left, in order to push back conservatives are going to have to start working and volunteering on judicial committees, state bar governing boards and committees, and related dull legal groups. We'd rather spend our free time with our families and in church-related activities, unlike the left, but if we want to save one of our three branches of government and prevent it from being used to destroy the other two, we're going to have to step out of our comfort zones and into the trenches.
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