A TikTok video uploaded by an African-American influencer named Jon Dawson just after Donald Trump was found guilty on 34 counts by a Manhattan Court should sound alarm bells in the Biden re-election office. He says in the video that he will definitely vote for Trump in the November elections as the former President “has got the people treatment”. In other words, he is being as unfairly treated by the American judicial system as African Americans are.
“He ain’t getting treated like a billionaire or a president or a politician… He (is) getting treated like me,” he says, adding “This man is getting popped for what even ordinary people don’t get popped for. More than even a Black man downtown with a bag of good-good in his pocket.” In other words, laws are being deliberately misapplied to frame and convict him for a non-felony, by those who run the system but who are deviously claiming to be fighting it!
Dawson’s emphatic soliloquy about getting cancelled by the elites (in media, universities and corporations) for standing up for Trump will strike a chord with many Indians too. Especially when Dawson says Trump is not the evil machine (that his opponents are supposedly working to shut down) but the “guy who is the rage against the machine”. He also tells viewers to apply their minds to figure out that they are actually being manipulated by a tendentious narrative.
That narrative avers that Trump committed 34 felonies to win the 2016 elections. And what were those? Not anything that any normal person would think falls under that category. His criminal act was to cook the books. Even that is not a felony under state laws unless that act facilitated another crime. What was that? Believe it or not, the second crime was “conspiring with others to promote (or prevent) the election of someone to public office by unfair means”.
And the man on whose testimony the prosecution based his case was Trump’s former lawyer who has been convicted before of perjury! Michael Cohen said he had paid the porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 as hush money during the 2016 campaign which Trump reimbursed as legal fees. He was paid by cheques, invoices and vouchers, totalling 34. Hence 34 felonies! But how that act helped him win in 2016 was not conclusively outlined by the prosecution.
Nevertheless, the jurors—all New Yorkers—were helpfully given three options and could choose one or more: violation of federal campaign finance laws, falsification of other business records or violation of tax laws. And they did not even have to reach a consensus on any one of the three. As long as they were convinced that Trump used some sort of unfair means to help get elected, they could arrive at a guilty verdict as he was promoting another crime!
As the judge was in no mood to demand that, the jury ‘deliberated’ as instructed and arrived at a verdict that left even lay watchers like Dawson dumbstruck. Going by precedents—but then again these do not seem to matter when it comes to partisan judges and juries—no one has ever been given jail terms for offences of this nature, or even house arrest. However, Democrats in the law enforcement system are already saying “Rikers (the jail) is ready for Trump.”
And they will definitely double down on their threats because, within a few hours of the guilty verdict, the Trump campaign raised over $50 million from supporters belying the other canard being spread that he is being unable to raise money. Jail seems to be the only way to prevent Trump from attending the Republican National Convention to formally become the party’s presidential nominee and also nix appearing in TV debates against a visibly senile Joe Biden.
So he still has to face trial for four felony counts in a federal case charging him with trying to overturn the 2020 election, including even conspiracy against rights, a law enacted to prosecute Ku Klux Klan members! Then there are 40 felony counts in Florida relating to White House documents that he brought back to Mar-a-Lago and obstructing an official probe into it. Evidence of Biden doing the same was not investigated when he said he had not meant to!
Trump was also initially indicted on 13 felony charges in Georgia for trying to overturn the 2020 election—part of an alleged racketeering conspiracy with 18 associates—but a rare non-partisan Judge Scott McAfee threw out six charges, including three against Trump in March. Predictably, the state prosecutor Fani Willis, a Democrat, has appealed to have them reinstated. Dawson’s diatribe about Trump “getting popped” has more than just a ring of truth.
The way the system (or the machinery as Dawson put it) is being used to stymie and bankrupt Trump should actually shock the intelligentsia. Soon after demitting office, he was hit with an avalanche of legal cases in courts with judges stacked against him, leading to guilty verdicts in civil fraud and defamation suits. Under another quirky proviso he cannot be prevented “legally” from running for office in 2024 even as a “felon”, so he is being hogtied in court cases.
That the US courts at all levels are replete with partisan judges and judgements is well known. The overturning of the Roe V Wade verdict of 2022 demonstrates the “show me the judge and I will show you the law” functioning of the courts there, from whichever side of the political divide the verdict is analysed. The way Trump has been “judged” since 2021 also indicates he is a special case where all bets are off on what the law provides and what the judges decide.
A couple generations of Americans have attained voting age since the time when a certain US President coolly said, “I have not engaged in sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky” and got away with that blatant untruth, Many Millennials and GenZ do not even know that in 1998 Bill Clinton became only the second US President to be impeached, the first one being Andrew Johnson 130 years before him. Then Trump was impeached twice in office.
That last fact would probably elicit nods of approval from those who have been weaned on a diet of selective news. They probably may not know Trump was also acquitted by the Senate (which decides on the validity of impeachment charges passed by the lower chamber, the House of Representatives) both times, including in 2021 when he had already demitted office. But clearly his political opponents, not necessarily only in politics, were not ready to back off.
But Trump’s conviction by what many now regard as a kangaroo court has only made his Republican base even more vocal about backing him for the presidency and, most worrying for the legal stormtroopers, he is leading in the opinion polls against the Democrat incumbent. It seems the ‘machine’ that Dawson repeatedly mentions has decided the legal system is its only weapon to prevent Trump from returning to the White House—no matter what American voters want.
Was it illegal to give Stormy Daniels hush money? No. Did the prosecution prove Daniels was paid by Cohen on Trump’s behalf? Only Cohen’s word for it, who has admitted he lied before under oath! Did the prosecution prove the money Trump paid—in 34 cheques, invoices, etc—were reimbursements to Cohen for the Daniels payout rather than regular legal fees? No. Was it even proved that Trump hiding those payments helped him win the elections? Certainly not.
Expecting the judiciary to help fight battles is not only an American phenomenon, of course. After efforts to scrap EVMs and return to paper ballots was rejected by India’s Supreme Court, there are moves to knock on its doors again in case the 4 June results do not go the way one political alliance hopes. Petitions are expected to allege widespread electoral fraud and threat to democratic processes, needing judicial intervention. That will sound familiar to Dawson too.
The author is a freelance writer. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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