by Carlton Joseph

Unbelievably, the Republican National Committee announced that fundraising exploded, citing $53 million raised online in

the 24 hours after Trump was found guilty of all 34 counts of falsifying business records in his hush money criminal trial;

this historic verdict made him the first former president in US history to be convicted of a felony.

Republican candidates, office holders and supporters are calling for retribution against political enemies and are urging fellow republicans to start charging Democrats with crimes. Prominent business executives are threatening to divert planned investments in New York to “business-friendly” red states, claiming that they have too many risks as fiduciary of other peoples’ money, they can’t raise rents, can’t evict and cannot predict taxes, and might fall victim to “no rule of law” in the wake of Donald Trump’s guilty verdict.

Trump dismissed the conviction as less serious than it sounds and vowed to appeal the “scam decision”; President Biden said that Trump was convicted after a judicial process and the jury reached a unanimous verdict, that Trump could appeal saying: “Our justice system has endured for nearly 250 years and it literally is the cornerstone of America. Our justice system, justice should be respected.”

In this divided America Biden’s pronouncement that the justice system should be respected rings hollow. How can Americans respect a justice system in which Congress is dysfunctional, and the US Supreme Court and the entire legal system has been politicized and weaponized? House Speaker Mike Johnson called the guilty verdict “a shameful day in American history, and the charges were purely political.” Senator Mitch McConnell declared that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg should never have brought the case and predicted the conviction would be overturned; Susan Collins declared that “The political underpinnings of this case further blur the lines between the judicial system and the electoral system, and this verdict likely will be the subject of a protracted appeals process.”

A Georgia court of appeals has halted Donald Trump’s election subversion case in Florida; Judge Cannon has indefinitely postponed Trump’s classified documents trial, a criminal case that was once viewed as one of the clearest open-and-shut prosecution. The guilty verdict has unified the Republican Party – the public must realize that Trump owns the Republican party and whatever demand he makes will be granted enthusiastically.

Unfortunately, this Republican acquiescence illustrates that basic moral values no longer matter and, if it does not, then “felony” should be removed as a crime. Unsurprisingly, a growing number of financial elites are throwing their financial weight behind Trump, because they see the charges as an accounting error, since for them it is an entertainment expense. However, in America everything is for sale, and they are responding to this major sale event, while Trump is openly testing the limits of campaign finance laws by tying financial requests to promises of tax cuts and favorable business policies including proposing a pro-oil drilling agenda.

The money is pouring in and the business elite is so emboldened that one group has advised that Trump should pick a vice president and announce his entire cabinet and run as a team before November election, saying: “we’ve got to take back America, we have to change the world, and President Trump is the only one that has the courage, actually, to make a difference in the world.” Eerily, despite his legal problems Trump retains significant financial support from Wall Street and the oil sector because they are looking at public opinion polls in the battleground states that put Trump ahead of Biden. They don’t care about the verdict, they want power and are determined that America will have the best democracy or authoritarian government money can buy.

Trump’s message of constantly attacking the judge and prosecutor was meant to undermine the validity of the proceedings in the eyes of the public, the world will find out if he was successful in November. However, criminal law plays a unique role, not just in our legal system, but in society at large; it is how the state takes action to protect citizens

from harm, promote public safety and hold wrongdoers accountable.

Most prosecutorial offices spend the vast majority of their resources prosecuting street-level crimes and low-level offenders who are disproportionately likely to be poor, people of color, and suffer from substance use disorders or mental health problems. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s successful prosecution of Trump represents a seismic change in prosecution. By using the power of the system to prosecute the rich and well connected, who usually escape accountability for the crimes they commit. Recall the 2008 Great Recession, after the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble and the global financial crisis that cost the US more than 8.7 million jobs and household loses of $19 trillion in net worth as the stock market plunged. No financial executive were charged or went to jail, but they were deeply involved in both the drafting of the new laws and with the agencies charged with its implementation. 

Nobody should be above the law and business elites who claim that “If they can do this to a business person like Donald Trump, they could do it to anybody in New York and a lot of businesses,” must be smoking something. The trial,

and the attacks against the country’s democratic institutions not only have effects on those willing to serve in those positions, but they also lower the perceived legitimacy of institutions.

The verdict demonstrated that no one is above the law. If the world starts to view America’s divisiveness as detrimental to world peace and prosperity, or acknowledge that the last bastion of democracy, free markets, and fair legal system, is tainted, the world will begin to look elsewhere for leadership and a place to redirect its capital flows.

(Trinidad-born Carlton Joseph who lives in Washington D.C., is a close observer of political developments in the United States.)

The perspectives and viewpoints articulated by the columnist unequivocally do not represent or endorse the official stance or opinions of the publication.