Laws are apolitical devices to protect the people of the country

March 26, 2024

A man bought a house several years ago for $150,000. Through the years, he had made $23,000 worth of improvements, and the market was good, so when he applied for a loan with the house as collateral, he valued it at $179,000.

The bank, however, valued it at just $171,500. So, he got his loan, and over the years paid it back on time with interest.

That’s the way it works. Lenders do their own evaluations of property offered as collateral. That’s the way it is for individuals, companies, and even billionaires like Donald Trump.

In Trump’s case, the document his business submitted for loans even has a disclaimer telling the lender to ignore his valuation and do their own, which, they would do anyway.

So, Trump got his loans with the lender’s valuation of his property, paid back the loans on time with interest, and even has the lenders saying they want him to continue as a customer.

Despite doing business this way for years, and that there was no victim that experienced losses from Trump, the New York Attorney General charged him under a statute that — believe it or not — does not require intent to commit fraud or anyone to be harmed by the fraud.

John Myers, the retired head of GE Asset Management, had this to say: “These high valuations may not be true but the banks and other sophisticated financial institutions do their own due diligence on valuations and basically could care less what Trump’s valuation was. Plus, the loans were all repaid, so who was the victim?” 

And when the case went to court, the judge did not use a jury, but decided the case by himself, and has fined Trump over $354 million in damages, and barred him “from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or other legal entity in New York for a period of three years.”

The Attorney General said that with pre-judgment interest, the judgment totals over $450 million, an amount “which will continue to increase every single day” until the judgment is paid.

Trump wants to appeal the ruling, so he must pay the judgement amount, plus interest, which totals more than $500 million. That deadline was yesterday.

A spokesperson for the Trump Organization called the ruling “a gross miscarriage of justice. The Trump Organization has never missed any loan payment or been in default on any loan.” This lawsuit is an election stunt to motivate base voters, the spokesperson said.

The Attorney General in this legal matter is Letitia James. She ran for office four years ago on a platform that included finding something, anything, to bring Trump down when he was the Republican president. 

Fox Business Network’s Charles Gasparino noted that what Trump did is commonplace, and it is so common that this case should be laughed out of court. 

“It won’t be, of course,” Gasparino wrote. “James may be the most partisan Democratic prosecutor in the country, but New York state courts are packed with like-minded judicial types who also think Trump needs to rot in jail. Even worse, objective evidence abounds of James pushing the boundaries in using her office to advance her political goals.”

The actions of Arthur Engoron, the judge in this case, are also under attack. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-NY, the House GOP conference chair, has filed a judicial ethics complaint against Engoron. Stefanik accuses the judge of weaponizing the legal system against Trump, and called on the judge to recuse himself.

As reported by NBC News, “Engoron has exhibited ‘clear judicial bias’ against Trump, including telling Trump’s attorney that the former president is ‘just a bad guy’ whom New York Attorney General Letitia James ‘should go after,’ Stefanik sent a letter to the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct. She said the judge has failed to honor Trump’s due process rights, concerns that she said are exacerbated by the former president’s position as the front-runner for the presidential nomination.”

She wrote that “Engoron had illegally gagged Trump’s protected political speech, violated political giving rules with financial contributions to Democrats as recently as 2018, and ignored a decision on the appropriate statute of limitations in the case. At the start of the trial, Engoron ‘infamously smiled and posed for the cameras,’ she noted,” according to the NBC report.

A term that has come to the fore recently is one that applies to this situation. “Lawfare” is warfare using laws as weapons, and the legal systems and institutions against an opponent, and/or to interfere with an individual's usage of their legal rights.

The term may refer to the use of legal systems and principles against an enemy, such as by damaging or delegitimizing them, wasting their time and money, or winning a public relations victory.

Lawfare in this case was made easier by a stupid law that allows someone to be prosecuted for essentially doing nothing wrong, and harming no one, other than the other political party.

That’s not how things should work in the United States of America, and those that are behind this should be relieved of their positions and disbarred.

Being soft on crime is a recipe for more crime, as we have seen

America has been known as a nation of laws. It has a system that catches criminals and those suspected of crimes, tries them, and when found guilty, metes out prescribed punishments. It is not a perfect system, as it has occasionally convicted innocent people, and sometimes meted out punishments more severe, or less severe than appropriate. But, it has worked pretty well.

For more than 20 years, the violent crime rate has been dropping. However, today, we find the justice system being undermined, crimes becoming more and more frequent, while proper consequences are applied less frequently. 

A commentary from Real Clear Politics (RCP), written by Bernard Kerik, a former police commissioner and Department of Correction commissioner in New York City, commented on this. “Effective Jan. 1, Democratic legislators in New York eliminated pre-trial detention with cash bail for about 90 percent of arrestees, including those charged with serious offenses such as burglary.”

Kerik continued, saying that “this law means more potentially violent criminals will be back on the street shortly after their arrests, without even a bail bond over their heads to keep them honest.”

The danger in this foolish plan was pointed out by New York public safety and law enforcement officials, who advised that this idea should be reversed, or things would quickly get worse. They were right.

“On the very first day that ‘bail reform’ was in place, a judge was forced to release a drunk driver with three prior DWI convictions, six total felonies, six misdemeanor convictions, and five charges of failing to appear on his own recognizance,” Kerik wrote. The man was then charged with another drunk driving offense less than two weeks later, this one killing a college student. And guess what? When in front of the judge for this charge, the judge was again forced to release him on his own recognizance.

Some more data on this topic comes from Yolo County, California:  “Individuals released in the county on $0 bail committed over 300 new crimes,” according to a statement from the Yolo County District Attorney, reported last October in the Woodland, CA Daily Democrat. “The DA’s data also shows that there is a 33 percent rearrest rate among inmates who were released on zero bail.”

California is not alone in this ridiculous process. The New York Daily News reported in March of 2020 that “Mayor de Blasio and the city’s top cop unveiled stats Thursday they say show many suspects freed under new bail reforms are going on to commit major crimes. During the first two months of the year, 482 people charged with a felony were released without bail only to [be] rearrested for new crimes 846 times, according to officials.”

If that wasn’t bad enough, there is the totally irrational “defund the police” movement. As budgets were cut, and restrictions put in place, many officers retired or merely left their job. Finding new recruits has become difficult, as there is much public sentiment against police officers, and violence against them has increased substantially.

While most other countries experienced a decrease in both violent crime and overall crime during the coronavirus pandemic, many U.S. cities saw the opposite occur. Large cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, and smaller cities such as Portland, Milwaukee, Louisville, and Minneapolis, have suffered large increases in crime.

Fortunately, officials are beginning to understand just how goofy this idea is, and refunding police — quietly, in some cases — has begun.

In addition to go-easy laws, and the defund the police movement, there are also prosecutors who have soft on crime attitudes. An article on the Heritage Foundation’s Website addresses this, saying, “One of the most disturbing features of rogue prosecutors is their utter disregard for real victims of crime and for victims’ rights under state law.” 

Authors Zack Smith and Charles "Cully" Stimson say this “new breed of prosecutors” usurps the constitutional power of the legislative branch by refusing to prosecute entire categories of crimes; abuse their offices; enable crime to explode under their watch; and harm the very people they pretend to care about the most, including low-income and minority individuals.

Smith and Stimson, as well as the National Police Association (NPA), reference billionaire George Soros’ efforts to support so-called “social justice” prosecutor candidates.

The NPA article stated, “Today, Soros supports candidates for public prosecutor’s offices who are anti-police. He funds them through massive donations to a collection of charities paradoxically called Open Society Foundations,” and it further said that Soros has reportedly spent more than $13.4 million supporting these candidates.

America suffers from significant weaknesses in several areas. They include, in addition to the damaged criminal justice system, an education system that is fast becoming a political indoctrination system; fair, balanced, and objective news journalism that is in many instances promoting leftist politics; continued devolution of strong, positive traditions, like the family and marriage; and large corporations that have gained far more control over our lives than they deserve or are supposed to have. 

The radical left is tearing America apart, and resistance to it is not nearly strong enough.