The following remarks on the Left’s lawfare are adapted from a keynote address I was asked to give at “A Seat at the Table,” an annual gathering of influential New Jersey conservatives, in Somerset on April 30th.
I’ve been asked to talk about how the Left has politicized and weaponized our justice system against both Donald Trump and ordinary Americans who still believe in fundamental Constitution protections, like the right to speak freely, the right to defend yourself, and perhaps most important of all, due process of law. America is currently experiencing an all-out attack by the Left on its Constitution, institutions, and core identity. Nowadays, the Enemy is not a distant, overseas threat, like the Soviet Union was during the Cold War. It is a homegrown contagion, one that has infected virtually every aspect of modern American society. In many ways, it has also infiltrated and subverted the Right, most of all the Republican Party, which remains anemic in the face of radical Left-wing opposition towards Donald Trump and the Make America Great Again Movement.
I have been down at the courthouse for pretty much every day since Alvin Bragg’s show trial started two weeks ago now against Donald Trump. To date, no Republican has appeared before the courthouse to protest this shameful miscarriage of justice, the worst of its kind ever in our history. That is because never before has a major party leader in Joe Biden weaponized the justice system to persecute his biggest political adversary, who happens to be leading in every poll to become the next president, in Donald Trump. At least never in America – until now.
Very few Republicans have even condemned Bragg, Letitia James, and Judge Merchan in public statements through the media. Fewer still have gone one step further and acted – through subpoenas, investigations, congressional hearings, even filing an ethics complaint – against them.
To the extent any opposition has been demonstrated by the Right at all, it has largely been driven through the grassroots, via alternative news outlets like War Room and Laura Loomer’s on the ground investigative journalism. There is very little institutional support, in my judgment, by the Right or its mainstream outlets like Fox News and talk radio, against this mockery of the rule of law taking place in Alvin Bragg’s courtroom.
Meanwhile, President Trump has been forced off the campaign trail and into this kangaroo court. He has been gagged from being able to speak or criticize the proceedings – even though virtually every aspect about this trial is unprecedented and, if allowed to run apace, will do irreversible damage to the rule of law in this country.
Usually, for a criminal trial, the prosecution asserts some crime, and it is required to prove the elements of the crime in court before a jury of the defendants’ peers. This has not happened. First, the jury pool comes from uber liberal Manhattan, which voted for Biden over Trump 9 to 1. Second, to date Bragg’s prosecutors have not only failed to prove a crime, but they have also not even been able to come up with an alleged crime in the courtroom.
Does anyone here even know what is being prosecuted in the courthouse? The news media would have you think it’s some sort of election fraud based on a hush money payment about Stormy Daniels. But none of that has been true. Bragg and his prosecutors have not even made reference to a statute or law, criminal or civil, on which to ground his theory of fraud. Indeed, Bragg has not said there was fraud in the first place. He won’t even go there, even though his prosecutors have created the impression in the minds of jurors, and the public, that somewhere, somehow, at some point fraud was committed. His prosecutors haven’t yet even talked about Stormy Daniels. They have been talking about Karen McDougall! Why? To create doubt and confusion in the minds of jurors – even though basic rules of evidence should prohibit the prosecution from doing just that!
Bragg hides the ball and thus leaves the rest of us scratching our heads to answer the who, what, when, where, and why the fraud occurred. His prosecutors can create rules on the fly because they receive absolutely no pushback. Not from any Republican in the New York State delegation. Not from any Republican in Congress; not from anyone, really, in a meaningful position of power, other than President Trump and his supporters.
The main reason for this is that hush money payments, under both federal and state law, no matter how salacious, are perfectly legal. Always has been, always will be. But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that they are not lawful. In order to prove fraud, the prosecutor would still have to show a lie was committed against the public – and resulting damages.
Again, no fraud alleged. No statute cited. No crime asserted. They have repeatedly mentioned election fraud, but that’s a federal crime, and this is state court. Even so, however, the falsified documents that have so far been discussed on direct and cross examination were signed in 2017 and 2018, well after the 2016 presidential election took place! After Donald Trump had won already! So how, tell me, can election fraud take place after a presidential election?
Let’s just assume, to play devil’s advocate, that their theory of fraud somehow makes sense. We’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. What are the damages? To plead fraud, successfully, you must prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, which is the highest evidentiary standard (since this is after all, allegedly a criminal trial), that damages occurred. It would seem, reading between the lines, that Alvin Bragg and Letitia James’ theory of damages is that President Trump won the 2016 election. They are still upset over that victory and have surmised that Trump winning constitutes damages because they are whiney and jealous crybabies.
What I just spelled out here, and there is much more to this case that I have omitted, is how the rule of law is being destroyed in real time. The prosecution accuses you of a crime you did not commit; they force you into court and browbeat the jury into believing that something must have happened – after all, why else would you be in court? Never mind the fact that the facts don’t add up, nor is there any law on the books that can be cited for a crime. What is being done in Letitia James’ courtroom makes the Soviet show trials look legitimate by comparison.
If the rule of law is destroyed, if the Constitution no longer applies, we are a nation in ruin. Total anarchy and disorder. If you’ve been to Manhattan in recent months, you can see that anarchy playing out on the streets: our legitimate President is being politically persecuted, against his will, in a courthouse – at the behest of a rogue district attorney, attorney general, and prosecutor’s office that is ultimately receiving its marching orders from Joe Biden and Merrick Garland.
Riots at college campuses, including Columbia and NYU, which, by the way, are home to two of the most prestigious law schools in the country – in other words, the incubators of our future lawyers, judges, district attorneys, and politicians – have been ransacked by anti-American agitators with loyalties to other countries, not the United States or our Constitution. In fact, the students – and their professors – hate everything this country stands for: they don’t understand the country, for one; but they also don’t even care to understand our traditions and values in the first place.
Instead, they demonize our history in one fell swoop. They call our Founding Fathers racist, and blanket label all white people – especially white men – as evil racists, who have committed the greatest injustices in human history. We have an obligation to take those words seriously. One, because those are the values of our future leaders – and those values will continue to infiltrate every institution in our society – including how laws are written and applied – unless put to brutal and resounding stop. Two, because they really believe it – and words, beliefs, equate to real world action. Not just in the realm of politics, but in every aspect of public life.
Why have Americans allowed this to occur? It’s one thing to be conquered by an enemy. But it’s another thing entirely to be conquered by an enemy without doing anything to prevent it from happening. Conservatives in this country have in large part been kowtowed into silence. Many of them are deeply, deeply confused about their priorities and convictions. Their inability to speak up in support of President Trump and recognize the much greater significance his political movement represents – for the future of this country, and Western civilization, more broadly – speaks to a total lack of conviction and failure to grasp the stark realities of our present crisis.
Anyone who fails to grasp these basic facts is patently unqualified for any position of authority in society today. Period. That includes everything from local school boards all the way up to President of the United States. It is not an exaggeration to say the fate of Western civilization hinges on the outcome of this November’s election.
What does Western civilization mean? It means preserving our Anglo-American heritage; it means preserving Christianity and the Church as the moral bedrock of our society. Morality must come from somewhere. If it doesn’t come from the Church or the Bible, it will relapse to where it came from in pre-civilized times: brute force. This is how the Left operates now, and it permeates also how they govern, how they adjudicate criminal trials, and how they assemble on the streets.
Get in line or get rolled over. That axiom governs Left wing politics today. The Right must be a strong counterforce against that moral code. That means getting onto their level, and meeting them with an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. If they prosecute our leaders, we prosecute their leaders. If they impeach and indict our President, we must do the same.
Better yet, we should be several steps ahead of the curve – and browbeat them into submission, before they drive us – and our society – off the cliff. If we don’t act, at some point the government will come to your door and force you to house illegal aliens against your will, or be placed on a public registrar for owning a firearm, waving the American flag, or refusing a vaccine. That is already happening.
You won’t even get to own your property anymore, including your house. If you negotiated your mortgage with a lending company, you are now on the hook for potentially hundreds of millions of dollars – depending on how some vindictive attorney general or judge evaluates your assets if they don’t like your politics. That might sound crazy, but that is exactly the precedent being set in New York by Letitia James. Unless you are prepared to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire lawyers to defend yourself in court, your property rights are no longer guaranteed. You don’t own what you think you possess if you have views that go against the Regime.
And silence isn’t good enough either, because in the Left’s moral framework, silence is violence. So, you can’t just remain silent anymore about your support for President Trump, that itself would be considered suspect. You must actively preach your religious devotion to Black Lives Matter and the cult of LGBTism – and your piety will be judged accordingly based on whether someone like Letitia James thinks you’re being sincere. But if you’re white, no matter how liberal, you probably will be screwed, regardless of all the virtue signaling you proclaim – real or feigned. Since that is the price you must pay for the sins of your ancestors. For the woke Left, nothing short of a complete and total overthrow of Western society – our Constitutional government, rule of law, and every tradition we hold dear – will satisfy their jealous rage.
What is the solution to this madness? As a society, we must reclaim the conviction that comes with the moral certitude of knowing we’re right and our political enemies are wrong. That conviction ultimately traces its origins to God. Full stop. But if we lack the conviction to stand up for our heritage – if we allow the Left to take down statues of men like Christopher Columbus and Thomas Jefferson with impunity and capitulate to the Left’s moral framing that our Constitutional form of government was founded by racist slaveholders, then we will have lost the game. If we believe, as they do, that the men who designed our Constitution were gravely immoral, what authority do we have to defend the fruits of their creation – property rights, due process of law, individual freedoms – which, no matter how noble, can never be defended against the injustice of their daily practices?
Even more relevant, if we cannot stand behind President Trump as he faces political persecution by a weaponized justice department in the courthouses, we will have abandoned every claim we have to preserve our country and our freedom. At no other point in American history has the outcome of a presidential election been so pivotal for determining the fate of not just America, but the world. Not in 1980 at the height of the Cold War with Ronald Reagan; not in 1940 at the peak of World War II with Franklin Roosevelt; not even in 1860, at the outbreak of the Civil War, with Abraham Lincoln.
The silver lining of all this is that the momentum is behind Trump, and he is poised to win – in a big, big way this election cycle. We cannot accept defeat; victory is our only choice. We must take back our country from the Left that is cannibalizing it by the day with their policies and toxic creeds. But even with Trump’s victory – and we still have a long way to go before securing that victory – our work will have only just begun. It is thus incumbent upon each and every one of us to continue this fight, day in and day out, knocking on doors, spreading the message, showing our support in public, vetting elected officials who truly align with our America First values. That is the duty of every single one of us in this room – for that is the only way true justice will return in this country; not in the law courts, which have been sabotaged by radical Left wing judges and juries, but in the court of public opinion – where reasonable people still exist, which will once again elevate President Trump to his rightful place in the Oval Office this November. Only then will the rebirth of justice – and freedom – become a possibility again. And then we can begin the first steps of the arduous work needed to restore America back to its former greatness.
Paul Ingrassia is a Constitutional Scholar; Communications Director of the NCLU; a two-time Claremont Fellow, and is on the Board of Advisors of the New York Young Republican Club and the Italian American Civil Rights League. He writes a widely read Substack that is regularly posted on Truth Social by President Trump. Follow him on X @PaulIngrassia, Substack, Truth Social, Instagram, and Rumble.
Very well stated. ????????????????????
This election really is a choice between the radical left, as we see on most tv sets every single night proving their total lack of respect for law and order vs a former President who’s fought for all American citizens putting America first. MAGA.
We as citizens *must get involved, in anyway we’re able to help preserve our Constitutional Republic*. That or for them to admit realize/support losing it to the radical, tyrannical pResident and his puppet masters, who are determined to destroy our nation as quickly as he/they can. God bless and protect our nation. Ultimately it’s all in His hands, but we need to do the work to make it more likely to happen.
The people who condone this unfair treatment of Donald Trump should think about one very important thing: if the left can do this to Trump, they can do this to anyone.
We stand with the US Constitutional Republic and want to see this case dismissed! It’s a disgrace!
It’s time we take back our country
The left is warning anyone who defends Trump and our nation that they will suffer the same fate. Most of us cannot afford the hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars to defend ourselves. Gen Flynn, Giuliani, Navarro, Stone, et.al all were attacked and bankrupted. Praying in front of an abortion clinic can get you 11 years in jail. It seems our judiciary and intelligence agencies are corrupted beyond belief.Trump was sabotaged throughout his presidency and intelligence is threatening to do the same if he is allowed to be elected again. We need an act of God to save this nation.
The horrors we’ve been worried and told about (Police State, 2000 Mules, The Democrat Party Hates America…) are no longer worries. The Trump trial is so abusive and corrupt it’s hard to believe. We live in a Police State!
Everyone knows this is merely the Democratic tactic to try to get Trump off of the ballot! They are terrified of him.
I disagree: Trump doesn’t need to campaign because this sham trial is its own political ad for Trump! Look at today, you’d think it was John Dean testifying against Nixon when Stormy Daniels testified! Its a joke like everything else they’re trying to throw at the Trump Wall just to see what sticks. And most Americas know it.
Why strangle him personally when court can do it for them and their hand stay clean Keep him out of the game long enough so he can’t win It will be a land slide election they’ll make sure of it The worst is yet to come
Come on Republican congressmen! It’s time to grow a spine, stand up, and say something. If you back Trump now, all of us voters that back him will remember it come election day.