Donald Trump speaks to a supportive Alabama crowd
Donald Trump spoke at a Republican Party gathering in Alabama on Friday night, and it turned into the kind of lovefest that seemed bizarre and inappropriate, in light of the third criminal indictment issued against Trump earlier in the week -- with a fourth indictment, in Georgia, almost certainly coming soon. Donald Watkins, longtime Alabama attorney and civil-rights advocate, reports at his Web site that the event descended into the kind of tribal politics one might expect to find in a dysfunctional backwater, such as Iran or Turkey
Alabama Republicans almost seemed to make a mockery of the notion that the GOP once was seen as a party of "law and order." In fact, attendees seemed to grow more worshipful of Trump as the indictments stack up. Watkins noted the similarities between this and a cult gathering, with Trump serving as supreme leader and attendees acting as his devout followers, unconcerned about the growing political threats he faces.
It's as if Alabama GOPers finally realize the U.S. Justice System produces different results for different groups of people, but they only object now because they have come to view Trump as a victim. American courts have been turning out incongruent results for decades, and Watkins cites several examples that make Trump's so-called "persecution" seem mild by comparison. Under the headline "The Donald Trump-MAGA Lovefest Explained," Watkins writes:
Donald Trump came to Montgomery, Alabama, Friday night and was welcomed by a sellout crowd of 2,700 political supporters at a dinner sponsored by the Alabama Republican Party. The event turned into a Trump-MAGA lovefest.
Nearly every GOP official in the state proclaimed his/her undying love for Donald Trump and support for his 2024 presidential campaign.
Nobody at the dinner cared about the fact that Trump has been indicted on 78 state and federal felony charges in Manhattan, Miami, and Washington. Trump is waiting criminal trials in those venues.
Another 30 or more felony charges are expected to be filed against Trump sometime this month by a Fulton County, Georgia, grand jury.
Nobody at the GOP gathering last night was talking any nonsense about "law and order." That's for street criminals.
As I explained in my August 3, 2023, article, Donald Trump is in a “do or die” fight for his life. Trump must win the presidency to save his own life. Losing is not an acceptable option.
Trump is expected to win the GOP’s nomination for president. Trump’s gigantic lead over his rivals in the Republican primaries is mind-boggling.
Based upon recent polling, the spate of criminal indictments against Donald Trump in Manhattan, Miami, Washington, and soon-to-be Atlanta has not eroded his political support within the Republican Party or derailed his chances of winning the presidency.
Barring divine intervention, Trump will become the 47th president of the United States in January 2025. His victory will go down as the biggest political comeback in American history. After Trump wins the election, all of his legal troubles will be over.
My social-media feeds indicate a large chunk of the American electorate is not at all sure about the notion of Trump becoming our 47th president -- particularly when you consider his words and actions when he was 45th presid3nt. The third indictment, which came down Tuesday, essentially charges Trump with crimes related to a coordinated effort to destroy American democracy. And that prompted a report here at Legal Schnauzer, questioning Trump's fitness to hold office.
While Trump cultists seem convinced American courts only became unfair once, in their minds, Trump became the target of a "witch hunt," Watkins points out that U.S. courts have been producing unfair results for many years. Our country is in the midst of what Watkins calls "A New Political Paradigm":
America has descended into the tribal politics that define third-world countries. The Democratic and Republican political parties are dominated by limited thinking, self-serving, unmoored, tribal activists. Neither party has demonstrated a willingness to place our country above its political agenda.
Within this paradigm, there is a growing realization among voters that the Department of Justice (DOJ) is weaponized against the political opposition. This is true, but the weaponization of the DOJ goes back more than a hundred years.
What is more, the weaponization of the DOJ is a tool that has been widely used by both political parties.
Yet, nobody in the MAGA movement seemed to care about the weaponization of the DOJ until Donald Trump became a target.
On the subject of political prosecutions, I would encourage anyone to ask former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy (Siegelman's codefendant) what that is like. But political prosecutions go back much further than that, Watkins writes:
Ironically, when Trump served as president (from 2017 to 2021), neither he, nor his allies in Congress nor those sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court, did anything to stop the weaponization of the DOJ.
As explained below, the last president who tried to stop the weaponization of the DOJ was George W. Bush.
A prime example of a political prosecution dates to 1915 and a woman named Callie House, Watkins writes:
In 1915, black social-justice activist Callie House sued the U.S. Treasury Department for $68,073,388.99 in compensation for ex-slaves. The white political establishment in Washington claimed that House's fight for economic security for ex-slaves was "setting Negroes wild" and that she was meddling in "white folks' things." They labeled House as "defiant" because she would not back down from seeking pensions, life insurance, health insurance, land grants, agricultural assistance, educational assistance, reparations for slavery, and burial assistance for ex-slaves and their families.
In 1896, House co-founded the Rutherford County, Tennessee-based National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty and Pension Association (MRB&PA) with Isaiah Dickerson and turned this organization into the first national grassroots movement to help ex-slaves achieve economic security and a chance for financial independence.
In 1916, at the urging of Southerners in Democratic President Woodrow Wilson's cabinet, Callie House and several MRB&PA officers were indicted on bogus mail-fraud charges, tried in an all-white, all-male federal courtroom in Nashville, and convicted. House was sentenced to one year in prison. White House and Department of Justice records from the era show that House was prosecuted for the sole purpose of destroying MRB&PA's national grassroots movement for land grants, pensions, and compensation for ex-slaves.
Other well-known social justice activists of the nadir who were targeted by the DOJ and FBI for persecution and prosecution included businessman Marcus Garvey and singer Billie Holiday.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. likely was the best-known victim of political targeting, but he was not alone. Writes Watkins:
The weaponization of the DOJ re-emerged in full force when this federal law enforcement agency acted in concert with state and local law enforcement agencies to attack Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., actress Jean Seberg, and thousands of other social justice advocates during the FBI’s infamous COINTELPRO era in a senseless bid to discredit and derail the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s.
The weaponization of the DOJ and FBI continued in the 1980s under their unofficial “Fruhmenschen” policy and in the 1990s, via the “Good Ol’ Boys Round Up.”
In the early 2000’s the DOJ used its weaponization program to destroy prominent Baltimore investment banker Nathan A. Chapman, who was the first African-American chairman of the University of Maryland Board of Regents.
In 2002, Baltimore U.S. Attorney Thomas M. DiBiago, a George W. Bush Appointee, targeted Nathan Chapman, then-Lt. Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, and other prominent Maryland Democrats for criminal investigations solely because of their party affiliation.
In July 2004, DiBiagio sent a memo urging his federal prosecutors to obtain "Three 'Front-Page' White Collar/Public Corruption Indictments" before Nov. 6, four days after the presidential election. Chapman was the first one of DiBiago's political targets who was prosecuted. In 2005, the George Bush Department of Justice forced DiBiago to resign.
In a 2007 New York Times interview, Deputy Attorney General David Margolis acknowledged for the first time that he asked for DiBiagio’s resignation because "[a] reasonable person could have concluded that he was trying to affect the outcome of an election, and we just can't have that."
Today, the practice of using the DOJ's criminal justice apparatus to "affect the outcome of an election" is a routine occurrence. Under Merrick Garland's leadership, the DOJ is in the business of picking "winners" and "losers"in the political arena.
That brings us back to Donald Trump and the loyalty he draws from MAGA supporters -- in Alabama and beyond. Writes Watkins:
Republicans across the country now realize that the DOJ and FBI have been weaponized against Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican supporters.
They spotlight the DOJ’s tough prosecutorial treatment of Trump, as compared to its undeniably lenient prosecutorial treatment of crack and powder cocaine using, tax-evading, prostitute-using, unlawful gun-possessing Hunter Biden – America’s First Son.
The allegiance that MAGA Republicans are conferring upon Donald Trump is a perverse form of the allegiance that Americans of interracial goodwill conferred upon Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., after each one of his 29 documented arrests on trumped up criminal charges. The arrests, themselves, are tantamount to badges of honor and street credentials in the respective movements led by each man.
Trump has become the face of the MAGA movement just as Dr. King became the face of the civil rights movement. Trump’s arrests legitimize him in the MAGA movement just as King’s arrests legitimized him within the civil-rights movement.
As Watkins notes, any comparison between Trump and Dr. King is perverse and only can be carried so far. After all, King could look beyond his own stature and goals to the greater good, something Trump seems unable to do. As Watkins puts it:
Trump is a divisive political cult figure, while Dr. King was a unifying humanitarian leader who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
Trump wants to take this country back to an unspecified time when America was great for one group of its citizens, but horrible for others. Dr. King wanted to take America forward to an America that embraced all of its citizens as equal men and women with full civil and constitutional rights.
