[Federalist] The people telling you Trump is uniquely corrupt want you to ignore decades of worse crimes committed by politicians favored by the establishment.In By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission, Charles Murray’s terrific book on the death of American constitutional order, the famed social scientist tells a remarkable anecdote that suddenly seems very prescient:
A former member of the US Attorney’s Office in New York has written about a popular training exercise among the staff: Name a famous person and then tell the junior prosecutors to figure out a plausible crime that could be pinned on him. The junior prosecutors win the game by finding the most obscure offense that fits the character of the celebrity and carries the toughest sentences.
Indeed, Murray goes on to note that this isn’t merely a game — there are many notable examples of how prosecutorial discretion is indistinguishable from lawlessness and that this seems to be particularly evident when America’s law enforcement apparatus gets involved in cases involving celebrities or high-profile targets. In the infamous case of financier Michael Milken:
The judge threw out the only real criminal charge, insider trading, leaving charges of violating financial regulations that, as the prosecutor in the case later acknowledged, amounted to "criminalizing technical offenses." The regulations in question hadn’t ever been charged as crimes before, nor have they been charged as crimes since.
By the People was published nine years ago, and with the Trump conviction in New York, we may well have just witnessed the nadir of abuse of prosecutorial discretion. It’s not just that a former president — and the leading contender to be the next president — has been convicted of a felony on dubious and untested charges.
For all of the demands that we respect "rule of law" in the wake of the Trump verdict, it has become patently obvious that prosecuting corruption is not bound by law or principle — it’s about gatekeeping. Those favored by our entrenched institutions get away with it, those who threaten unaccountable power do not.
The Washington establishment has kept its Sauron-like gaze fixed on Trump in the hopes that you won’t notice that nearly our entire political class is corrupt in ways that threaten the country far more than paying off a mistress and classifying it as "legal services."
To understand how distorted the system has become, it helps to understand how Trump’s various court battles stack up next to his political peers.