The Russia Collusion Probe Makes Justice Serve Politics
To support President Trump, it is not necessary to defend Michael Cohen, his long-time personal lawyer. Nor, to deplore the dubious grounds on which he was sentenced, this week, to three years in prison. Nor to lament the dirty little triumphalism of Hollywood’s moral midgets who rush to put in the boot when Cohen is down.
What was at stake is the perversion of the justice system by those who would use it to win political power struggles, satiate political humiliations, and punish much-loathed policies.
No, it is necessary for the reason it was necessary for Emile Zola to hurl J’Accuse at the anti-Semitic persecutors who sent Captain Alfred Dreyfus into life imprisonment for treason.
What? You invoke a comparison of that outrage against justice, and the glorious defense of Dreyfus, with this sorry tale of alleged improper payments to porn stars and reported misrepresentations of construction deals with the Russians? That is like comparing skeptics of the global warming–climate change hypothesis to deniers of the Nazi Holocaust! There is no comparison in terms of gravity or stature of the actors!
But, of course, that is the point. What is at stake is not the innocence or guilt of Michael Cohen or the length of the sentence. Nor was the innocence of Captain Dreyfus and the fairness of his sentence (life imprisonment in Devil’s Island, where he served five years before he was cleared) what was actually at stake.
What was at stake is the perversion of the justice system by those who would use it to win political power struggles, satiate political humiliations, and punish much-loathed policies. What gives the Dreyfus case historic resonance and his defense moral grandeur is that the French justice system and its reputation were hijacked by those whose purpose was political: to discredit and diminish the place of Jews in French public life.
The principle of legal justice free from political agendas and feuds is as important in the case of Michael Cohen as Alfred Dreyfus. Precisely because it is a matter of principle.
The principle of legal justice free from political agendas and feuds is as important in the case of Michael Cohen as Alfred Dreyfus. Precisely because it is a matter of principle. (That they both are Jewish, I trust, is irrelevant.)
Harvard law professor emeritus, Alan Dershowitz, has become a pariah and hate figure of left-liberal Democrats by pointing out repeatedly, including in two full-length books, that President Trump and his administration are victims of a legally-framed, but politically-motivated witch-hunt—even if Mr. Trump does say so himself.
Dershowitz has pointed out that the campaign finance laws have been violated repeatedly by both parties, with fresh Clinton trespasses coming to light daily—but there was and is no special counsel. Ann Coulter, always good for a poor-man’s version of J’Accuse (personally, I admire much of what she writes) paints a picture of the campaign-finance circus in her latest column.
Charges against Michael Cohen relate to when he said what to whom during the months-long investigation not only by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his cadres but by Congress. These charges would not even exist if there had been no investigation.
Prof. Dershowitz points out that some charges against Michael Cohen relate to when he said what to whom during the months-long investigation not only by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his cadres but by Congress. These charges would not even exist if there had been no investigation. To take just one report:
“Dershowitz emphasized that crimes by Cohen and others were committed as a result of Mueller’s appointment, not before he began the investigation.
“Dershowitz said this shows Mueller ‘didn’t start with very much’ and is now charging former Trump associates with making false statements to his investigators.
“The very fact that he’s conducting an investigation has created these crimes. … In the end, I don’t think Mueller is going to come up with very much in terms of criminal conduct that existed before he was appointed and that’s quite shocking,’ he said, adding that it calls into question the role of a special counsel in ‘creating’ crimes.” [Emphasis in original]
By way of contrast, the neoconservative Weekly Standard, which has borne the #NeverTrump banner from the beginning, sees the indictment and conviction of Mr. Cohen as one of the few straightforward confirmations that President Trump’s protestations of innocence are lies. The editors begin by acknowledging the unlimited scope of Mr. Mueller’s ambition to succeed in proving wrongdoing:
“Even for the commentators whose job it is to follow these things, tracking the progress of special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing and wide-ranging investigation into potential election crimes committed by the Trump campaign has been no easy task. … to date, 33 individuals or companies have been charged with or pled guilty to crimes … it’s often been hard to remember its origins and purpose. The investigation’s bewildering complexity is in some ways an advantage to the president, whose message is simple: He did nothing wrong, and the Democrats and the Fake News Media are trying to bring him down out of pure spite.”
But they view the sentencing memos filed for the prosecution by both Mueller and the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York as definitive in asserting: 1) Trump directed Cohen to buy the silence of the models/porn stars claiming to have had sexual affairs him, and 2) worked with Cohen to conduct business deals in Russia after the Presidential election campaign began. And that the latter were deals that both Cohen and Trump claimed were discontinued before they actually were ended.
It would not be illegal for Mr. Trump to pay two women the hush-money they demanded before the 2016 presidential election.
It would not be illegal for Mr. Trump to pay two women the hush-money they demanded before the 2016 presidential election. It would not be illegal for Mr. Trump and his representatives to conduct business deals related to constructing a hotel in Russia as part of the worldwide chain. Some of the alleged illegality relates to who told investigators what and when. These are the “crimes” to which Mr. Dershowitz alludes: they did not exist when Mueller’s investigation began; his investigation brought them into being. Even if they are crimes, they do not justify the special counsel’s appointment. Except, of course, if your goal is entrapment of your political enemies.
There also is the alleged crime relating to how Mr. Cohen was paid for his services by the Trump organization, what the payments were called (“retainers” or “reimbursement”). If they were reimbursements for what Cohen paid to the two women, then that might be a campaign law violation by Mr. Cohen. And then, there is the question whether or not Mr. Cohen, on Mr. Trump’s behalf, stopped negotiating with the Russians before the political campaigning began—but, especially, if he told Congress the real date the dealing ended.
These are the deeds that media editors, commentators, comedians, and Hollywood’s unintentional comedians are greeting as evidence that America is governed by a lawless, dangerously criminal president. These are the prime—the truly serious—instances of law-breaking that lead the editors of the Weekly Standard to conclude:
“The president’s mendacity is so aggressive, his malfeasance so common, that his everyday behavior no longer surprises and these days rarely elicits condemnation from other Republicans. […] high-ranking public officials have resigned from office for doing far less. […] For all of the Trump-Russia story’s confusion and complication, that much, at least, is simple.”
Cohen’s conviction also involved some charges of tax evasion, not linked to Mr. Trump. I am not discussing those here. It is my personal view, not highly germane, here, that almost anyone with years-long, complex financial affairs and other business dealings probably could be nailed on some tax violation if scrutinized with the determination of the special counsel’s team. “Evasion,” the actual crime, usually is a matter of discretion as it involves ascertaining intention.
But leaving aside the tax weapon, which has brought down many a politician when his enemies felt he had to go, do you think that Mr. Cohen, even now, really believes what he testified to in court in his last chance to avoid a longer jail sentence? Remember, the investigation, threats of long jail time, and offers of leniency for “turning in” Mr. Trump have been hanging over him for months. For a typical successful professional in midlife, at the apex of his career, the idea of going to prison for a long time inspires a terror probably more intense than death.
And so, with memos from the special counsel and the New York U.S. Attorney urging a long sentence, Mr. Cohen rises to plead with the judge:
“Recently, the President tweeted a statement calling me weak, and it was correct, but for a much different reason than he was implying,” an emotional Cohen said. “It was because time and time again, I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds.”
Could anything that might come to his lips sound sweeter than these words to the special counsel and the vast spectral Greek chorus of left-liberal Democrats who yearn to forever destroy and discredit the Trump administration, and impeach and imprison Mr. Trump and his family and associates?
Mr. Trump has insisted from the outset that there was no collusion with Russia to influence the 2016 election—the only serious charge against him, by the way, and one that nothing that was found during the full-time two-year investigation has tended to confirm. As Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Mr. Cohen should have said nothing to Congress or the special counsel about his services to Mr. Trump. And, at the appropriate time, Mr. Trump should have pardoned Cohen if he were sentenced.
Indeed, Mr. Trump still should pardon Mr. Cohen. I hope that he does. It would be entirely consistent with the President’s repeated statements that Mr. Mueller is conducting a “witch-hunt,” that no crimes have been committed, and that the special counsel has spent two years and tens of millions of dollars doing the bidding of the Trump administration’s political foes.
I am untroubled that in pardoning Mr. Cohen we might be letting him get away with tax evasion. The tax evasion was unearthed, and perhaps judged evasion, only because Mr. Cohen was in the crosshairs of the great legal crusade to “get Trump.”
A pardon, of course, might induce literal apoplexy in Hate Trump types, but it could not motivate those who survived to any greater energy in trying to destroy him. It would signal, in effect, that the special counsel should go home. Time to remove the justice system, as far as possible, from the arsenal of political demagogues.
J’Accuse!
About the Author: Walter Donway
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