AMAC Magazine Exclusive – By Shane Harris
Until Joe Biden’s debate fiasco, no narrative in the 2024 campaign had dominated the news cycle like the multi-pronged liberal effort to use the legal system and government power to slander, impoverish, and ultimately imprison Donald Trump.
On the surface, to the casual observer, the myriad lawsuits, FBI raids, and other legal attacks on Trump, his family, his close associates, and his business interests may appear to be disconnected plots to exact political revenge on the former president. But a growing body of evidence unearthed by enterprising journalists and courageous conservative officials is confirming that all of these schemes are in fact part of a coordinated effort across all levels of government to undermine Trump’s re-election bid and deny conservative voters a voice this November— destroying the rule of law and imperiling the American constitutional system in the process.
At the center of this complex web is the Biden administration, which since 2020 has implicated itself in virtually all of the legal attacks against Trump. Ironically, while Biden, elected Democrats, and the corporate media have sought to portray Donald Trump as an “enemy of democracy” and make that the main issue at stake this election, it is in fact Biden’s own actions that pose the greatest threat to democratic rule and the American constitutional system.
The left’s extrajudicial attacks on Trump have also been devastating for America’s image abroad and has led to a catastrophic collapse of moral leverage in international diplomacy, with comparisons of the United States to a third-world country and “banana republic” now becoming commonplace. Moreover, American adversaries like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea have taken full advantage of the domestic chaos to advance their own interests at the expense of the United States.
This is the real story of the 2024 campaign cycle, and this is what voters should keep in mind when they head to the polls this fall.
Biden Accidentally Gives Away the Game
When the history of the Trump lawfare is written, a rare Biden press conference on November 9, 2022, will likely emerge as a crucial date on which the president unintentionally telegraphed his administration’s intention to fully weaponize the government and legal system to keep Trump from returning to the Oval Office.
On that day, just hours after Republicans retook the House in the midterms—and before Trump even officially launched his 2024 campaign—Biden was asked a question about a potential comeback bid from Trump. In response, the president declared, “We have to demonstrate that he will not take power . . . by making sure he, under the legitimate efforts of the Constitution, does not become the next president again.”
For Biden, who has struggled to string together even a few sentences throughout his presidency, that comment seemed unusually precise. Rather than pledging to beat Trump at the ballot box, Biden announced his intention to prevent Trump from “taking power” and “make sure” he did not become president again.
What has followed has been exactly what Biden promised. Apparently recognizing that Biden has little chance of beating Trump in a fair race, the Democrat machine, from the Biden Department of Justice (DOJ) down to local prosecutors’ offices, has instead set out to distract Trump, take his money, harass his family and allies, and, if necessary, jail him.
Meanwhile, when Trump has tried to speak out against the blatant political persecution he is facing, Democrat judges have placed gag orders on him, essentially denying him his First Amendment right to free speech.
Mike Berry, the Director of the Center for Litigation at the America First Policy Institute, told AMAC Newsline that the left “has weaponized the government and the very institutions that are meant to protect us in order to win” because it knows “it cannot defeat conservative values in a fair fight.”
“For years, the Left has been hard at work devising plans to ensure it retains control over our government, our courts of law, our schools, and even our way of life,” Berry continued. “Whether it’s the numerous lawsuits against President Trump or those who support him, the left sees our legal system as merely one more weapon in its arsenal to destroy the very foundation upon which America was built.”
A Curious Confluence of Events
As Breitbart News first reported in June, just nine days after Biden’s ominous press conference, on November 18, three noteworthy events occurred that appear to confirm the Biden administration’s role in escalating the lawfare against Trump.
The first was Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith to investigate Trump—an appointment that many legal experts on both sides of the aisle have argued is invalid because Smith was not confirmed by the Senate, which is traditionally the case with special prosecutors.
Notably, Garland’s appointment of Smith came just a few months after Garland signed off on an FBI raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home as part of the Florida documents case. In that case, prosecutors are arguing Trump illegally kept classified documents after he left the White House, even though the president has unilateral authority to declassify any document he wants.
The DOJ’s treatment of Trump in this case is particularly glaring given that boxes of classified documents were also discovered sitting in Joe Biden’s Delaware garage from his time as vice president—but unlike the president, the vice president does not have declassification authority. Earlier this year, however, a report from Special Counsel Robert Hur recommended no charges be brought against Biden for the apparent violation of multiple federal laws on account of the president being an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
Before Smith’s appointment, the DOJ had been attempting to charge Trump with seditious conspiracy related to January 6, but they had hit a wall. Smith quickly changed course, instead focusing in on the Florida case and another in Washington, D.C., where Trump was being charged with election interference. Biden staffers reportedly met with Smith just weeks before he handed down an official indictment against Trump.
The second occurrence on November 18, 2022, was a full-day visit of Fulton County, Georgia, prosecutor Nathan Wade to the Biden White House, where he spent hours meeting with top lawyers from the White House Counsel’s office. Following that meeting, Wade played an integral role in advancing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s RICO charges against Trump.
Importantly, the public only knows about that White House meeting as part of the fallout from revelations earlier this year that Wade was engaged in a romantic relationship with Willis—a major ethics violation, particularly given the fact that Wade was hired at an inflated salary specifically to help with the Trump prosecution. Were it not for a lawsuit stemming from this scandal, the Biden White House likely would’ve succeeded in keeping their communication with a key member of Willis’s team a secret.
Finally, November 18, 2022, marked the date when former Acting Associate Attorney General Michael Colangelo, then the third-highest ranking official at the DOJ , likely issued his two weeks’ notice. Exactly 14 days later, Manhattan District Attorney Bragg announced Colangelo’s hiring as an assistant prosecutor—a seemingly inexplicable step down for an ambitious young attorney.
Trump attorney Will Scharf, who spoke with AMAC Newsline for this piece, described Colangelo stepping down to work for Bragg as “the rough equivalent of like a four-star General in the Army, quitting his job and enlisting in the National Guard as a private.”
Like the Biden DOJ before Smith arrived, Bragg, who openly campaigned on prosecuting Trump, had struggled to build a case against the former president. But just a few weeks after Colangelo’s arrival, the case suddenly saw a flurry of activity, and charges were officially filed in April 2023—charges that ultimately led to an outrageous conviction earlier this year.
Yet, despite the fact that one of Biden’s top DOJ officials—who also previously worked for the DNC and donated to Barack Obama—left his high-powered role to lead the prosecution of Biden’s chief political rival, the Biden administration has maintained that it had no involvement with the case whatsoever.
For Scharf, the evidence of the Biden administration’s involvement is clear. “When you combine Joe Biden’s actual statements, words that came out of his mouth, with this sequence of events, you get a very clear picture of both what the plan was and what its intent was,” he said. “This is a campaign of lawfare intended to interfere with President Trump’s ability to run for re-election.”
Follow the Money
While the Biden administration has provided the legal muscle behind many of the Trump lawsuits, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and top liberal donors have provided the funding to back the lawfare campaign.
According to a report out in June from The Daily Caller, the DNC has doled out close to $2 million to one law firm that represented E. Jean Carroll in her sexual assault and defamation lawsuits against Trump and has given millions more to another firm that filed numerous amicus briefs in the United States v. Donald Trump Supreme Court case.
The Carroll case, perhaps more than any other, illustrates the collusion among the various elements of the Democrat Party machine to “get Trump.”
In 2019, Carroll, a former advice columnist, published a book in which she claimed Trump sexually assaulted her in the dressing room of a New York department store sometime in the 1990s. When Trump denied the accusation, Carroll sued him for defamation.
Initially, it appeared a defamation lawsuit was the best Carroll and her Democrat backers could do, as the statute of limitations had long since expired on the alleged assault itself. But then, in 2022, just as several other Trump lawsuits were getting a shot of adrenaline from the White House, New York’s Democratic legislature passed the Adult Survivors Act, creating a convenient one-year window to file a civil suit even if the statute of limitations had expired.
Within hours of that law taking effect, Carroll filed a lawsuit against Trump for battery and defamation. Like the Bragg case, a New York jury and judge ensured the deck was stacked against Trump from the beginning.
Then came the cash infusion from the DNC to the law firm representing Carroll. Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, also contributed to Carroll’s lawsuit.
The media dutifully played its role as well, portraying Carroll as a sympathetic victim and ignoring crucial details that called her story into question, such as her inability to recall even the exact year when the alleged assault took place and inconsistencies in the accounts of two women whom Carroll allegedly told about the incident after it occurred. Trump, meanwhile, was castigated as an “accused rapist.”
In the end, in one of the more bizarre rulings in a high-profile case in recent memory, the jury found that Carroll had not proven her allegation of rape, but nonetheless found Trump guilty of sexual abuse and defamation. In other words, while agreeing with the defense that Carroll did not credibly prove the central claim of her case, the jury still found Trump guilty in what appeared to be a blatant display of political bias.
Trump was ordered to pay an $83.3 million settlement in the case. The left scored a double victory, keeping Trump off the campaign trail and diminishing his personal fortune that he could have used to assist his campaign.
The left went after Trump’s personal fortune again in the New York civil fraud case, brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James—another Democrat politician who ran on the explicit promise to “get Trump.”
James alleged that Trump illegally inflated the value of his properties to secure favorable loan terms from banks. As one of her key examples, James pointed to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida.
Trump had said that he believed the property was worth between $1 billion and $1.5 billion—exponentially greater than the $37 million appraisal by Palm Beach County. But real estate experts say that the county’s appraisal is laughably low, particularly given that other smaller homes in the same area have sold for more than that figure, and Trump’s estimate is far closer to the actual market value.
Business leaders, such as Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary, have also scoffed at the premise of the case itself, at one point stating on CNN that Trump’s alleged crimes are things done by “every real estate developer everywhere on earth in every city.” Moreover, the prosecution failed to even identify a victim in the case, as the banks Trump supposedly defrauded were paid back on time with interest and were eager to do more business with Trump.
But the judge in the case, Arthur Engoron, nonetheless ordered Trump to pay an astronomical $450 million penalty. James also notably went after Trump’s two eldest sons, leading to them being barred from serving as business executives in New York for two years.
Collateral Damage
Along with Trump’s family, Trump’s political allies have also become targets in the left’s lawfare campaign.
Peter Navarro, a top advisor to the former president on trade, reported to prison earlier this year, becoming the first White House official ever imprisoned for contempt of Congress. Trump advisor Steve Bannon faces prison time for the same charges.
Meanwhile, the Biden DOJ has declined to prosecute incumbent Attorney General Merrick Garland for precisely the same crime, as Garland has refused to comply with multiple House subpoenas.
Left-wing courts have even sought to target Trump’s attorneys. John Eastman, who assisted the former president in pursuing legitimate challenges to the 2020 election results, has had his law license suspended by a California court and faces criminal charges for allegedly participating in a conspiracy to overturn the election in Arizona.
Perhaps most concerning of all, the Biden administration and Democratic Party haven’t stopped their lawfare campaign with just Trump and his inner circle. Everyday Americans—and conservatives in particular—have now become targets as well.
Although it has been virtually ignored by the corporate media, Democrat prosecutors in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Nevada have targeted Trump supporters for questioning their states’ suspect election practices. In Nevada, the political persecution was so blatant and egregious that the case was shut down by a federal judge.
But public enemy number one for the Biden administration has undoubtedly been the pro-life movement. Following the Dobbs decision in 2022, even as it ignored the dramatic spike in violent attacks on churches and pro-life pregnancy centers, the Biden DOJ has pursued a ruthless campaign of political revenge against grassroots pro-life activists.
The most high-profile case came just a few months after Dobbs in September 2022 when the FBI conducted a dawn raid on the home of Mark Houck, a Catholic pro-life activist and father of seven. Houck was charged with violating the FACE Act for shoving to the ground a pro-abortion activist who was hurling expletives and insults at Houck’s young son outside a Pennsylvania abortion clinic.
Although a jury ultimately acquitted Houck and he has since filed a lawsuit against the DOJ for unjust prosecution, the Biden DOJ sent a clear message: it was open season on pro-lifers, and they intended to use the full power of the federal government to terrorize and harass anyone who publicly demonstrated anti-abortion views.
Over the next two years, they drove that message home again and again, recently even sentencing a 75-year-old grandmother with a debilitating medical condition to two years in prison for the crime of praying outside an abortion clinic. The Biden DOJ has prosecuted and jailed more than a dozen other pro-life activists, all while failing to crack down on the growing violence against Christians and pro-life organizations.
A common refrain among conservatives is that if the left can weaponize the government and the legal system against Trump, they can do so to anyone. But the terrifying reality is that lawfare against the American people is no longer a hypothetical—it is happening every day.
Equally alarming are the active efforts by the legal establishment and the media—supposedly two key defenders of individual liberties—to excuse and cover up these egregious abuses of power. Instead of protecting dissent, these institutions, which have been corrupted by the left, have worked to shut it down, bringing the country frighteningly close to one-party rule.
What’s It All For?
Given the effort and resources the left is pouring into attacks on Trump and conservatives, it’s worth asking, why?
The simple answer, as is always the case with the left, is power.
The left has already made its intentions clear through the public platform of the Democratic Party, numerous votes in Congress, and policies already in place in blue states and cities. With H.R. 1, the so-called “For the People Act,” congressional Democrats tried in one fell swoop to federalize elections and completely destroy election integrity.
Biden’s so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” spent $1.2 trillion installing climate change alarmism as the official policy of the U.S. government, while Democrat efforts to abolish the Senate filibuster came up just short.
By throwing the border wide open and inviting in at least 10 million illegal aliens, Biden and congressional Democrats have also laid the groundwork to fundamentally reshape American society—and more importantly the American electorate.
Meanwhile, the left has succeeded in taking control of the American education system and brainwashing an entire generation of kids to believe that America is a hateful, racist place, all while peddling the lies of left-wing gender ideology.
Perhaps the last remaining institution that can check the advances of the left is the Supreme Court, which the left has also set to tearing down and remaking in its own image by seeking to pack it with partisan liberal judges and threatening and slandering the conservative justices currently on the court. Along with its recent decision in United States v. Donald Trump, the Court has already this year stopped another of the left’s most audacious lawfare efforts when it struck down an attempt by Colorado to remove Trump from the ballot—a strategy that dozens of other Democrat state officials were looking to mimic.
If Democrats retain control of the Senate, retake the House, and keep the White House, however, there will be nothing stopping their lawfare crusade from continuing unimpeded, and the Supreme Court may well be the next victim.
Fighting Back
As dire as the situation may seem, many courageous conservative leaders are not taking the lawfare against President Trump lying down, and there are now serious cracks in the left’s schemes.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, for instance, has pledged to sue the state of New York for its “unconstitutional lawfare” against Trump.
But perhaps the most noteworthy success came in July with the aforementioned Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Donald Trump, a case which stemmed from Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s alleged role in the January 6 Capitol riot. In a 6-3 decision, the Court upheld the constitutional principle that presidents are protected from criminal prosecution for official acts taken while in office.
As Scharf, who played a key role in that victory, explained, this decision will likely prove instrumental beyond Smith’s investigation. “It’s important to note that the immunity decision also has real impact in other decisions, most importantly in Florida and in the Manhattan DA’s case,” Scharf said. “In the Manhattan case they introduced evidence that we believe falls squarely within the Supreme Court’s decision. That’s why the sentencing in New York has now been delayed. Down in Florida, you have aspects of presidential decision-making at play in that case as well.”
Moreover, Scharf continued, the Court’s decision sets an important precedent. “Long after President Trump is no longer president again,” he said, “these decisions will serve an important role in safeguarding the institution of the presidency and our entire Constitutional system.”
“The key thing to take away from the Supreme Court decision is that the Court sees what is going on here—that this is an effort at political prosecution and persecution and an effort to pervert our constitutional system all as part of a hare-brained scheme to get Trump at all costs.”
Scharf also encouraged everyday people to get involved and speak out about the ongoing threats to our legal system and Constitution. “It’s incumbent on all Americans to speak out against the mainstream media narrative, which is deeply corrupted and which is blatantly inaccurate when it comes to addressing the nature of these cases and what they’re really all about,” he said.
“When my team and I were brought on last August,” Scharf said, “the situation we were looking at was the potential of trial after trial throughout the 2024 election. Fortunately, because we have been willing to dig in and fight, and because we have been able to win a lot of those fights, we have essentially thwarted that basic plan.”
“As conservatives we care about the Constitution and the rule of law, and we have to care about this perversion of our legal system that Joe Biden and his allies have inserted into the 2024 election,” he concluded.
Of course, the ultimate opportunity to defeat the lawfare against Trump and the American people will come on November 5, when the voters will finally have their say.
Shane Harris is a writer and political consultant from Southwest Ohio. You can follow him on X @shaneharris513.