'Special Treatment'? Politico Legal Editor Claims Legal System Is Too Nice to Trump

April 15th, 2024 7:13 AM

If anybody has any doubt about the extreme liberal bias of Politico, an article they published on Friday should resolve that matter. Their legal editor, James Romoser, attempted to portray the legal system as being too nice to Donald Trump. 

The diatribe was headlined: "How Donald Trump Gets Special Treatment in the Legal System."

...He lies about his cases. He vilifies the judges overseeing them — and then vilifies their wives and daughters, too.

...As Trump prepares to begin his first criminal trial on Monday in New York, the tolerance of his tirades is perhaps the most glaring sign of the judicial system’s Trump exceptionalism. But it’s far from the only example. Over the past year, in ways large and small, in criminal cases and civil ones, Trump has consistently been given more freedom and more privileges than virtually any other defendant in his shoes.

Romoser's fraud kicked into high gear when he invoked the name of New York Attorney General Tish James who campaigned for her office on a blatant platform of going after Trump: "New York Attorney General Tish James won a $454 million civil judgment against him for perpetrating years of corporate fraud."

Although James told Rachel Maddow she had no vendetta against Trump, her own words prove her to be a flat-out liar. Something that the venomous Romoser avoided since it completely undermines his ridiculous premise about Trump somehow getting special treatment from the legal system:

So far gone is Romoser's hatred of Trump that he even expressed outrage at the appeals court which lowered his bond set by Judge Arthur Engoron in the New York (victimless) civil fraud case from nearly a half billion dollars to $175 million.

But after Trump complained to a New York appeals court, a panel of judges intervened with an unexpected 11th-hour reprieve, issuing a terse, unexplained order that sharply reduced the bond amount that Trump had to post while he appeals the verdict. The decision ensured that Trump wouldn’t have to start selling off assets and that James couldn’t start seizing them.

Although Romoser went on to whine about Trump using his Fulton County, Georgia mugshot as a "fundraising tool" he carefully avoided any mention of the district attorney in that case, Fani Willis, currently under investigation for corruption.

Ironically, although the subtitle of one of the sections in the Romoser diatribe was "A fusillade of vitriol," he launched into "a fusillade of of vitriol" against any judge who displayed any sense of fairness in the midst of the politically weaponized lawfare launched against him. A few examples:

...Cannon’s deference to Trump has carried over into the post-indictment phase of the case. She has raised the eyebrows of plenty of legal experts — and stoked the frustrations of prosecutors — by issuing confusing rulings on some pretrial matters while leaving others unresolved for long stretches. Most significantly, her plodding pace has cast a pall of uncertainty over the trial schedule — another delay that benefits Trump.

...But with Cannon, some experts detect a more sinister motive: If Trump is elected, many believe she would be on his short list for a Supreme Court appointment.

Despite all the media hype, the Bragg case is so weak that even the fairly liberal Vox mocked it as dubious in "The dubious legal theory at the heart of the Trump indictment, explained."

...Bragg built his case on an exceedingly uncertain legal theory. Even if Trump did the things he’s accused of, it’s not clear Bragg can legally charge Trump for them, at least under the felony version of New York’s false records law.

...The felony statute requires Bragg to prove that Trump falsified records to cover up a crime. Bragg has evidence that Trump acted to cover up a federal crime, but it is not clear that Bragg is allowed to point to a federal crime in order to charge Trump under the New York state law.

...There’s also one more twist here. The statute of limitations for the felony version of the false records crime is five years, while the statute of limitations for the misdemeanor version is only two years. Trump’s final payment to Cohen occurred in December 2017, which was more than five years ago.