Commentary: Trump Against a Corrupt Political Establishment

by Jeffrey Lord

If you pull back to the proverbial 30,000 feet and look down on the American political scene, the conclusion is impossible to escape.

Witness this latest headline from the New York Times:

Judge Rules Trump Committed Fraud, Stripping Control of Key Properties

The decision in a lawsuit that could go to trial next week is a major win for Attorney General Letitia James, who says former President Donald J. Trump overvalued his holdings by as much as $2.2 billion.

Which is to say, New York Justice Arthur F. Engoron joins the long parade of corrupt political insiders who have made the outsider former president a target.

Laughably, the judge also said in his ruling, in which he claimed Trump supposedly overvalued his properties, that Trump’s famous Mar-a-Lago resort is valued at $18 million.

Quickly enough, the New York Post did the research and headlined this:

Real estate insiders bewildered by judge’s $18M valuation of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago: ‘Would list at $300M’

Oops. (And this guy is a judge? Seriously?)

In this case, Engoron joins with New York Attorney General Letitia James, the person who, decidedly corruptly, pledged in her campaign for attorney general that she would make Trump her legal target.

In the latter case, ABC News reported this of James:

ALBANY, N.Y. — Letitia James fixated on Donald Trump as she campaigned for New York attorney general, branding the then-president a “con man” and ″carnival barker” and pledging to shine a “bright light into every dark corner of his real estate dealings.”

Five years later, James is on the verge of disrupting Trump’s real estate empire after a judge ruled Tuesday that he defrauded banks, insurers and others by exaggerating the value of assets on paperwork used for deals and securing loans.

The ruling shifts control of some of Trump’s companies to a court-appointed receiver, meaning he could lose control of prized properties like Trump Tower, a sprawling suburban estate, office buildings and more.

…

James began investigating Trump just about as soon as she took office as attorney general in 2019.

Which is to say, Democrat James openly campaigned on corrupting the office of New York attorney general to satisfy her lust for political vengeance.

Then there’s Justice Engoron, who handed James her victory. A Democrat like James, the justice let his own vivid partisanship slip by describing Trump this way: “He’s just a bad guy.”

So much for an impartial judge.

Not to be forgotten either is Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his own indictment of Trump.

The serious problem here is that as events have played out since Trump appeared on the political scene, one public official or institution after another has revealed themself as corrupt.

The list that includes New York Attorney General James, New York Justice Engoron, and local DA Bragg is long and, one suspects, getting longer.

At the head of the list, as the opening day of the Biden impeachment inquiry has demonstrated in detail, is the president of the United States himself, ably assisted by his son Hunter.

The House Oversight Committee, chaired by Kentucky Republican Representative James Comer, released this statement:

There is mounting evidence that Joe Biden was involved in his family’s influence peddling schemes, including while he served as Vice President. However, Democrats and their corporate media allies continue to ignore this overwhelming evidence as they seek to distract the American people from the Biden family’s corruption. Below are over 20 examples of Joe Biden’s involvement.

Move from Biden to Fulton County, Georgia. As detailed in this space, the Atlanta News First site headlined this about Democrat District Attorney Fani Willis.

Fulton DA disqualified from investigating alleged election interference by Burt Jones

Fani Willis held a fundraiser for Democrat Charlie Bailey after her grand jury had already been convened

The story reported:

ATLANTA, Ga. (CBS46) – Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was disqualified Monday from investigating alleged 2020 election interference by state Sen. Burt Jones, the Republican who is also running for Georgia lieutenant governor.

Fulton Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney said Willis’ hosting of a fundraiser for Jones’ eventual Democratic opponent, Charlie Bailey, has caused a “concern about the District Attorney’s partiality” in the case.

Move on to the Department of Justice, now run by Biden appointee Attorney General Merrick Garland. As mentioned before in this space, the Washington Post headlined this on Jan, 31, 2017 — a mere 11 days after Trump was sworn in as president.

Resistance from within: Federal workers push back against Trump

The Post reported:

The signs of popular dissent from President Trump’s opening volley of actions have been plain to see on the nation’s streets, at airports in the aftermath of his refugee and visa ban, and in the blizzard of outrage on social media. But there’s another level of resistance to the new president that is less visible and potentially more troublesome to the administration: a growing wave of opposition from the federal workers charged with implementing any new president’s agenda.

Less than two weeks into Trump’s administration, federal workers are in regular consultation with recently departed Obama-era political appointees about what they can do to push back against the new president’s initiatives. Some federal employees have set up social media accounts to anonymously leak word of changes that Trump appointees are trying to make.

And a few government workers are pushing back more openly, incurring the wrath of a White House that, as press secretary Sean Spicer said this week about dissenters at the State Department, sends a clear message that they “should either get with the program, or they can go.”

In this space in June of this year, I noted that the Wall Street Journal said this about the Biden Justice Department’s obsession with targeting the former president:

Special counsel Jack Smith announced the indictment in a brief statement on Friday. But no one should be fooled: This is Attorney General Merrick Garland’s responsibility. Mr. Garland appointed Mr. Smith to provide political cover, but Mr. Garland, who reports to Mr. Biden, has the authority to overrule a special counsel’s recommendation. Americans will inevitably see this as a Garland-Biden indictment, and they are right to think so.

One could go on with this list.

But it already includes the attorney general of New York, a New York justice, the district attorney of Manhattan, the district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, the Biden–Garland Department of Justice, and that’s before we get to those huge chunks of the federal bureaucracy that went out of their way to undermine the Trump administration.

Which is to say that this is a startling reveal of something millions of Americans have now come to vividly understand. Whole sections of the American political establishment are corrupt: obsessed with power and all too willingly ready to target anyone whose political views they find unacceptable. Like, say, conservatives.

No one, clearly, understands this better than former President Donald Trump. Just yesterday, he put out this statement from his campaign:

The Radical Left Democrats, now led by Joe Biden, are the greatest threat to democracy the United States of America has ever faced.

Exactly.

As 2024 looms, it is safe to say this battle will be about a corrupt political establishment versus democracy. Or put another way?

It will be about a corrupt American political establishment versus Donald Trump.

Buckle in.

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Jeffrey Lord, a contributing editor to The American Spectator, is a former aide to Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp. An author and former CNN commentator, he writes from Pennsylvania at [email protected]. His new book, Swamp Wars: Donald Trump and The New American Populism vs. The Old Order, is now out from Bombardier Books.

Appeared at and reprinted from The American Spectator