Until less than six months ago, no United States president or former president had ever been indicted for any serious crime.  The closest any president had ever come to criminal prosecution for a serious crime was Richard M. Nixon, who was named as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the Watergate affair in the mid-1970s.  Ulysses S. Grant was arrested for speeding in his horse-drawn carriage, but a speeding ticket is hardly a serious crime.

The history of the United States of America’s integrity in respecting its current and past presidents and not levying false and contrived serious crime allegations against them came to a screeching halt on April 4, 2023 when Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Jr. announced an indictment of President Trump for 34 counts of “falsifying business records.” This was soon followed up with a federal indictment of President Trump in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida for allegedly mishandling classified documents.  That indictment was filed June 8, 2023.  The lead government attorney is Jack Smith.

Remaining in the hopper are additional likely criminal indictments for matters relating to the January 6 trespasses in the U.S. Capitol and purported election interference in the State of Georgia.  

Although these savage actual and intended prosecutions directed at a U.S. president are without even the tiniest scrap of precedent in the history of the United States of America, there is plenty of precedent for them in the history of the communist Soviet Union and the fascist Nazi Germany.  Indeed, the prosecution of political opponents through political show trials is usually on page one of the playbook of history’s biggest and most evil monsters such as mass murderers Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler.

Josef Stalin cemented his iron control over the Soviet Union by arranging political show trials in the mid-1930s for Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev, two of the “Old Bosheviks” who had helped Comrade Lenin overthrow the Tsar in 1917.  Kamenev and Zinoviev were two of Stalin’s main political opponents.  The prosecutor hand-picked by Stalin was Andrey Vyshinsky.  Vyshinsky accused Kamenev and Zinoviev of (variously) treason, espionage, poisoning and sabotage in a kangaroo court political show trial in 1936.  Each of them was found guilty — no surprise there — and promptly executed.

It is Andrey Vyshinsky who is sometimes attributed with the origin of the phrase “Show Me the Man and I Will Find You a Crime.”

After the failed July 20, 1944 conspiracy to kill Adolf Hitler, Hitler took his inspiration from Stalin in subjecting the conspirators to political show trials after which they were promptly executed.  Hitler set up a “People’s Court” — another kangaroo court —presided over by fanatical Nazi Roland Freisler.  Hitler reportedly boasted to others that “Freisler is our Vyshinsky.”  Freisler was what today might be termed an “activist judge.”  He made no show of being a neutral judge and instead often acted as the prosecutor, denouncing the defendants himself and then pronouncing a guilty verdict without even a murmur of opposition from defense counsel (who kept their mouths shut if they knew what was good for them, unless perhaps they spoke up to denounce their own clients).  After the guilty verdict, defendants were hung from piano wire nooses suspended from meathooks — a grisly and torturous death to be sure.  Freisler’s tenure came to an end when he was killed in court during an American air raid in February 1945.

Bringing history up to date in our present time, we now find President Trump’s fanatical Far Left opponents taking a page from Josef Stalin’s and Adolf Hitler’s playbook and attempting to corruptly use our justice system to destroy him and prevent his re-election as president in 2024.  If Biden had more of his wits about him, we can imagine him boasting to confidants, like Adolf Hitler, that “Jack Smith is our Vyshinsky.”  Is Alvin Bragg the modern-day equivalent of Hitler’s Roland Freisler ?  The jury is still literally and figuratively still out on that one.

Make no mistake about it, the real purpose of these prosecutions of President Trump is not to enforce the law but rather to illegally and feloniously interfere with the 2024 election.  The goal is to imprison or otherwise greatly hinder Donald Trump so that he cannot run an effective  campaign for president.

Attorney Generals in Red States like Missouri, Tennessee, Texas and Louisiana need not sit idly by while corrupt federal and state prosecutors feloniously interfere with free and fair 2024 presidential elections in those States.  And if indeed a corrupt prosecutor is indicted for election interference and extradited to stand trial in, say, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas or Louisiana (or in all of them), he may find that he or she cannot just run to a friendly federal court and get an injunction to stop the state criminal prosecution.  There is an old U.S. Supreme Court case by the name of Younger v. Harris that generally bars federal courts from enjoining state criminal prosecutions.

On the subject of whether these prosecutions of Donald Trump constitute election interference, consider this.  What would be greater election interference, a group of armed thugs barring members one political party or the other from entering voting booths at a single voting precinct, or so tying up the time of the leading candidate of the Republican Party for president that he cannot effectively campaign throughout the nation?  The first of these affects one voting precinct.  The second affects virtually every voting precinct in the entire nation.  Indeed, the Democrats sent armed thugs to 100 voting precincts to stop Republicans from voting and it would not be as serious an election interference as what they are doing to Donald Trump at the present time. 

If indeed a prosecutor’s goal is to imprison Donald Trump so that he cannot run an effective presidential campaign, it would seem poetic justice to see that prosecutor hoist by his own petard and to spend that campaign sitting in a jail cell in, say, Missouri.  Of course, if that prosecutor is indicted by Attorney Generals in six or seven Red States and convicted in all of them, the States might need to draw straws to see which State gets to put its prison facilities to good and just use.