Trump is Vance's real target
The Friday Letter / No. 448 / Orlando, Florida
The decision by Manhattan's district attorney to indict the Trump family chief accountant offers a good lesson in what's wrong with American jurisprudence: prosecuting attorneys who are elected politicians. It works in theory. Prosecutors must deliver equal justice under the law or out they go. But it doesn't work in corrupt one-party governments, and we can safely say that New York City and State fit that definition.
Cyrus Vance Jr., backed by Attorney General Letita James, indicted Allen Weisselberg for tax code violations that are normally handled as civil matters. As Holman W. Jenkins Jr. noted last week in the Wall Street Journal, “The IRS cares mainly about getting maximum money at least cost for its enforcement efforts. Not so elected officials such as Mr. Vance and Ms. James. If the prosecution is a giant net loser financially for the state of New York, that's fine with them.”
Nothing new here, of course. For eight months Dinesh D'Souza spent nights and weekends with murderers and rapists in a confinement center for helping a friend who had no chance of winning her election to the U.S. Senate, exceeding the campaign contribution limits with $20,000 funneled through third parties. He was indicted by Preet Bharara, an Obama-appointed U.S. Attorney a D'Souza friend describes as “a man with the soul of an East German border guard.”
D'Souza was about to release his pro-American, anti-Hillary film and book, America: Imagine a World Without Her, and the establishment was desperate to delay it until after the 2016 election. (It failed.)
By contrast, a hotelier who gave more than $180,000 in straw donations to Hillary Clinton and other Democrat candidates in 2008 was handed a fine, community service, and three years of probation. As D'Souza notes in his 2015 book Stealing America, Singh Chatwal's sentence also covered his guilty plea to witness tampering, a felony. This is how the system works.
Because his employer is Darth Vader, Allen Weisselberg can count on no such compassion. The only way he'll avoid the hoosegow is to flip on Donald Trump, the real target here. Corrupt Democrat politics in one-party states has the fragrance of rotting carp.
Just so that we don't miss any subtleties in this drama, Vance had Mr. Weisselberg, 74 next month, a Trump family employee for decades and hardly a flight risk, perp-walked in handcuffs for the entertainment of delighted state-controlled photographers.
Vance's theatrics present a problem, however, as Jenkins notes: “The Trumps use the same appraisers, tax lawyers and accountants that other New York real-estate families use, albeit the others are not so imprudent as to put their heads in the tiger's mouth by contesting with the nation's political class for its top prize.”
If there is even a scintilla of possibility that the Trump standard will be applied city-wide to every real estate developer – and we don't concede this possibility given New York's corruption – Vance would find himself in an awkward bind.
The tax code is an illogical conglomeration that Congress uses to reward its friends and punish its enemies. It has no more connection with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles than masks have with preventing the Wuhan coronavirus.
Jenkins compares two sections of the tax code, that which lets corporate employers hand out untaxed health care benefits (inflating costs and benefiting wealthy taxpayers) and that which prohibits employers from handing out untaxed apartments and school tuition, a wholly logical practice aimed at easing New York's confiscatory tax rate, 52% for top earners.
Hope for a return to the rule of law is well illustrated in several letters in Tuesday's New York Post. A smattering:
“Recently, the Manhattan DA decided it was prudent to give a pass to accused looters, arsonists, vandals and domestic terrorists,” reader Bob Porch says. “It is time to once again have DAs who prosecute real crime and criminals.”
“It underscores the Democratic Party's loathing and fear of Trump,” Mel Young wrote. “Since the day he left office, there has been a relentless drive to obliterate his record of success and ensure he can never again win the White House.”
That is the point, as Jenkins argues in his Journal piece: “The likelihood that Mr. Trump, for all of his incentive to signal otherwise, would run for president again always seemed to me low and seems lower now.”
Don't count on it, Holman. Donald Trump is like Freddie Kruger in Nightmare on Elm Street. He keeps popping back up, and they don't know what to do about it.
Bring it on
Tucker Carlson supports an investigation of the Jan. 6 demonstrations at the Capitol. He wants to know three things: Who shot Ashli Babbit? Why won't the government release its 14,000 hours of surveillance tape of the incident? And how many FBI and other agency undercover plants took part? We'd also like to know on what legal grounds several of the participants are still being held without trial or bail. With no conservatives and only one Republican, anti-Trump Liz Cheney, on the House investigation committee, don't expect answers. The foregone conclusion of House Speaker Pelosi's commission is that Trump instigated what she calls an insurrection.
Your tax dollars at work (continued)
State television PBS featured singer-actress Vanessa Williams singing what it calls “the black national anthem” on its annual “Capitol Fourth” program last Sunday. “It's in celebration of the wonderful opportunity that we now have to celebrate Juneteenth,” said the first black Miss America, referring to the newest taxpayer-funded paid holiday for federal employees. Quoted in a New York Post story, Lavern Spicer, a black Republican who ran unsuccessfully for Congress last year, offered Vanessa some advice: “Vanessa honey,” she tweeted, “a Black national anthem is something a Black African Country would have, not a country like America that exists for everyone.” So much for E pluribus unum, out of many, one.
In the news . . .
The New York Times got itself wrapped around the axle with an Independence Day “news story” claiming that the American flag is a symbol of Trump-fueled white supremacy and hatred. As excerpted by the New York Post (an actual newspaper), Trump supporters have embraced the flag “so fervently” that leftists have “all but ceded the national emblem to the right.” From the Times story: “Today, flying the American flag from the back of a pickup truck or over a lawn is increasingly seen as a clue, albeit an imperfect one, to a person's political affiliation in a deeply divided nation.” A few weeks ago a Times editorial writer said she was “really disturbed” to see the flag flown by Trump supporters. Which reminds, me. I forgot to take down the flag from my front porch on Sunday.
Presidential quotes
(Our thanks to reader Mike Mendola for this suggestion)
“I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.” – Thomas Jefferson
“The only way to spare more pain and more loss – the only way – is millstones no longer mark our national mourning. Milestones I should say. No more no longer monk, mark our national mourning.” – Joe Biden, in a White House speech, Feb. 22, 2021
“I have never been particularly poor at calculating how to get things done in the United States Senate. So the best way to get something done, if you hold it near and dear to you that you, uh, like to be be able, uh, well, anyway.” – Joe Biden, in a press conference, March 25, 2021
Election fraud update
The New Hampshire Supreme Court struck down a 4-year-old law that requires additional proof of identification of voters who register shortly before an election, Just the News reports. Gov. Sununu urged the Republican-controlled legislature to “continue working to make commonsense reforms to ensure the integrity of New Hampshire’s elections.”
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee rejected a challenge to Georgia's voting integrity law, saying a group called the Coalition for Good Governance failed to show imminent constitutional harm and would disrupt Georgia's upcoming special election for the statehouse. The liberal organization is run by three activist women. Judge Boulee is a 2019 Trump appointee. – from a story at Just the News.
Our web domain will soon change to votetrack.us, as we expand reporting on important votes in Congress, the federal courts, and state legislatures. In the meantime, the Friday Letter is published at substack.com and at The News-Guardian.