THE CALVARY OF DONALD J. TRUMP
In an irony of sorts, among the numerous criminal charges filed against Donald John Trump is that he indulged in election interference. Judging by news reports, this was because he sought to prevent unflattering information about himself from being known just weeks away from the election. Hillary Clinton, who is still livid over losing the 2016 Presidential election to Donald Trump, may regard any such action as having been motivated by the desire to avoid erosion in votes in the forthcoming poll. What is equally likely, if not more likely, that Trump prevented a report alleging that he and a porn star were intimate because of the need to prevent such a report from affecting his relationship with his wife Melania. The fact that the interview appears to have been prevented from publication in perpetuity rather than just until the election got over indicates that his motive was less political than personal. The individual who ensured that the salacious item was prevented from publication would most likely have been threatened with prosecution and possible jail time were he not to testify in the manner he did, placing the responsibility for the entire matter of giving the former porn star such a generous payment for her reminiscences on Donald Trump. The question is motive. Even assuming that the feelings of Melania played no part in the decision to kill the item through overpayment, surely it has been usual for politicians to conceal information unfavourable to themselves from the public. Trump would not have been the only individual to have done that, a check on almost any politician would show that he or she played up her image and worked at ensuring that there was no damage through leakage of unflattering information. Not if she or he could help it. To consider such an activity as election interference would be to claim that only the most saintly of individuals had the right to contest democratic elections, and that no candidate ought to do anything designed to protect his or her reputation from being sullied while the election process was ongoing. Putting President Biden’s rival for the 2024 contest for the White House looks a lot like election interference, and should Biden fail in his bid to get a second term, the very prosecution of Trump may get used to book him on a charge of election interference, a charge that ought to be made very sparingly indeed in any democracy.
In New York, the judge hearing the case brought against Trump has placed a gag order on the former President. If Trump is not allowed to speak about his side where the trial is concerned, he would be giving a walkover to his opponent. The prosecution and his detractors freely talk about the case and seek to deepen an impression that Trump is unfit to be Mayor of South Bend, much less President of the US. At the same time, Trump is prevented from expressing in public his view that the entire matter of such a case involving a former porn star against him has been initiated to prevent him from contesting the 2024 polls. The Department of Justice is headed by Merrick Garland, a Biden appointee, and he seems to be doing everything in his power to send Trump to prison before the elections. Those involved in real estate claim that the value placed by the prosecution in a case involving “falsification of the extent of assets” that Trump has is far lower than the market value. If an individual were to conduct his business in a way that fixed the value of his assets at a price that any possible prosecutor would judge to be accurate, even if the prosecutor knew nothing about the real estate and other markets, business would get paralysed out of fear that any valuation placed by an individual businessman would be judged to be misleading under the law. Given that prices often depend on perception and are subject to change, such a stance would scare away businessmen in the US even more than the fear that they undergo in China, a country where unexplained arrests are the norm these days.
Had it been any other individual other than Donald Trump, it is doubtful that he would have been subjected to the Calvary that is being undergone by him now. Trump may be knocked out of the race through prison or lose as a consequence of his reputation getting expertly and expansively torn to shreds by prosecutors chosen by the US Department of Justice. Whatever the reasons, the way in which Trump is being persecuted when he is Biden’s rival in the Presidential polls conveys a perception of election interference on steroids.