Commentary

While reading Matt Taibbi’s treatise on the endless prosecutorial effort against former President Trump over more than six years, I couldn’t help but think about the cost involved, yes, and I was again reminded how the president delivered on his promises while enduring the process.

While the effort to tie Trump to Russia goes back to 2015, writing about the effort to prosecute him, Taibbi notes that “People have forgotten how long this has been going on.  You can go back to November of 2016, when a group of six members of the Electoral College signed on to an effort to deny Trump the presidency.”

There was the Vanity Fair article on December 15, 2016, “Democrats are Paving the Way to Impeach Trump,” in which Senators Elizabeth Warren, Dick Durbin and Chris Coons introduced a bill requiring Trump to divest himself of foreign holdings with the failure to comply constituting a violation of the Emoluments Clause. They were critical of his ownership of the Trump hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue of the nation’s capital.

After his inauguration there was talk of pulling out all the stops to reverse the election. A resistance network was formed in the deep state, where Trump became the enemy within in his own government.

Even the late Sen. John McCain was part of the effort, informing the FBI of the Steele dossier, only to find out they already knew about it.

When Texas Rep. Al Green made the initial effort calling for impeachment, the Washington Post published, “The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun.”

Taibbi reminds that New Yorker published an article in the summer of 2018, “Allen Weisselberg, the Man Who Knows Donald Trump’s Financial Secrets, Has Agreed to Become a Cooperating Witness,” stating “Allen is the one guy who knows everything.”

“Getting Trump indicted has seemed just around the corner for six long years now,” notes Taibbi.  He writes about how Democrat leaders spent all their currency trying to sue, indict, impeach, remove, or jail Trump.

Just as Rep. Adam Schiff insisted that he had the goods on Trump during the impeachments, the January 6 committee now sees in each of its witnesses a Watergate “John Dean moment,” but the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson fell short.  As did the previous six years of other “gotcha” testimonies.

With the series of January 6 hearings continuing, the New Yorker recently published, “A Potential Criminal Prosecution of Donald Trump is Growing Closer.”

While Chairman Bennie Thompson ruled out the possibility of referring criminal charges against Trump, Liz Cheney was quick to say “the committee has not issued a conclusion regarding potential criminal referrals.”

As I have frequently stated here, the committee is dragging out its partisan investigation in an effort to have an effect on the Republicans in the midterms, especially those endorsed by Trump.  Of course, they expect their findings to work against a Trump decision to run in 2024, too.

Not only did Taibbi note that the hearings were “not having the desired effect politically, it apparently achieved the opposite, somehow swinging working-class and even non-white voters toward Republicans in what AXIOS this week called a ‘seismic shift’ in American politics, aided by inflation acting as an accelerant.

“Political parties are ultimately are about persuading voters and these prosecutions have proven time and again not to be persuasive.”  But don’t discount the disinformation tactics of the Alinsky leftists.  They will see their entire effort “a net minus politically if Trump is not jailed,” writes Taibbi.

So, how does Trump come out the victor without seeking reelection in 2024?  Like Pogo, he has met the enemy, and he’s thought this through. 

May God continue to bless the United States of America.