Trump Never Stood a Chance Against His Political Enemies and Their Courts | Opinion

Even when you know it’s coming, even when you know a successful appeal is likely, even when there is fair analysis that a conviction may be a net positive for former President Donald Trump’s chances in November, Thursday’s guilty verdict in a Manhattan courtroom on 34 counts is still a sad new low for an American justice system that is supposedly based on facts, evidence, judges who preside fairly, and juries that decide coherently.

Those standards lie in ruins at the feet of the metaphoric image of Lady Justice, the famous figure seated holding a scale and wearing a blindfold. The scale represents the necessity of weighing evidence objectively. That did not happen in Trump’s case. The blindfold represents a system that treats citizens without regard for who appears before it. That means no benefit for the rich or powerful, no disadvantage for any marginalized class.

Trump represented a singular combination of a wealthy, powerful defendant who nonetheless represented an aggrieved figure in the forum of a New York courtroom. It was not a glib take to say he could not get a fair trial on the island of Manhattan. Every dark suspicion held by skeptics has been confirmed. The fix was in.

I will leave to others the task of detailing the procedural outrages that should lead to a successful appeal. The bones of that challenge will involve a biased judge lording over a trial on artificially concocted crimes, featuring testimony from some witnesses who trafficked in irrelevancies and other testimony disallowed because it would have brought helpful clarity.

A different type of clarity now settles over a troubled America. Our institutions are collapsing before our eyes. Our courts used to be venerable halls of reliable justice. Real crimes used to be prosecuted. District attorneys used to avoid targeting people in political vendettas.

It is of only middling comfort that the appeal may someday fix this. This should never have happened. And I don’t mean the conviction; I mean the trial itself. The sparsity of the charges aside, consider for a moment that a former president of the United States was dragged into a dank New York court building because his enemies sought to ruin him for how an expenditure was characterized in a legal matter.

In a larger sense, the true motivation is far more ominous. Trump is being punished for the crime of beating Hillary Clinton and the anticipation of repeat offender status when he beats Joe Biden.

The system whose corruptions Trump has long identified seeks to cripple him because its denizens know his return to the White House is a direct threat to its power and influence. That system is looking to destroy him politically, financially and personally.

He has known this from the outset. He emerged from court Thursday defiant: “This was a rigged and disgraceful trial,” he proclaimed into the cameras and microphones in the courthouse lobby that have marked his arrivals and departures for six weeks. “The real verdict will come November fifth.”

“I am fighting for our country and our Constitution,” he continued. “We will fight to the end and we will win. Our country is going to hell.”

How deeply does that sentiment resonate now among the jurors who matter most—the voters? A felony conviction is normally never a candidate’s favorite development, but nothing about this is normal. Americans who despise Trump are not more numerous as a result of his verdict; they are simply happier. The voting bloc that may grow could be defined as those who have been wobbly on him up to now but who are repelled by the sight of his persecution at the hands of a system weaponized to block his return to the White House.

This is election interference on steroids, and it’s not only MAGA Nation that will seek to respond.

That response will come in November. If it were today, Trump would win in a landslide. For every timid soul suddenly concluding that Biden isn’t so bad because of what twelve jurors say about Trump, there may be several more declaring that this cannot stand. His campaign should be scouting NASCAR tracks for his next rally, because conventional arenas will not suffice.

The question is whether those passions can sustain for four months. The path to November features stops on a debate stage June 27 and a Republican convention three weeks later. Plopped between those dates is the expected sentencing July 11. Each of those moments provides an opportunity for Trump to remind the nation of what has been done to him.

Some Americans seeking to protest this spectacle have just become Trump voters. Their power, combined with the millions who have been with him for years, may yet overturn this verdict with a force and finality that would dwarf any appeals court.

A Trump victory will repair this injustice, but it will not erase it. No one should forget that it happened. Tinhorn political hacks in DA offices all over America are already energized in search of the big fish of their dreams. While the court of public opinion will rule on Trump’s fate on November 5, a broader public outcry will be needed to prevent this from ever happening again—to anyone.

Mark Davis is a syndicated talk show host for the Salem Media Group on 660AM The Answer in Dallas-Ft. Worth, and a columnist for the Dallas Morning News and Townhall.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.