August 22, 2018
Even by the standards of those of us who remember our teachers wheeling televisions into our classrooms so that we could watch the Watergate hearings, or the sound of Sam Ervin’s sonorous drawl coming out of boom boxes on beaches everywhere, yesterday was an ASTONISHING day. Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman, was convicted of 8 felony counts, including “five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank fraud and one count of failure to disclose a foreign bank account,” (Source: “Paul Manafort, Trump’s Former Campaign Chairman, Guilty of 8 Counts,” by Sharon LaFraniere, The New York Times, 8/21/18).
At virtually the same time, Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, stood in a federal courtroom in lower Manhattan and pled guilty to eight felonies, including buying the silence of two women with whom Trump had had an affair “in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office…for the purpose of influencing the election” in 2016, (Source: “Michael Cohen Says He Arranged Payments at Trump’s Direction,” by William K. Rashbaum, Maggie Haberman, Ben Protess and Jim Rutberg, The New York Times, 8/21/18).
The cherry on this sundae was the indictment and arrest of Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter and his wife, who stand accused of using $250,000 in campaign contributions to fund a lavish lifestyle that they could in no way afford. Hunter, the second member of Congress to endorse Donald Trump, attempted to disguise personal expenditures as charitable contributions. A pair of expensive golf shorts were reported as golf balls for veterans. $152 that Margaret Hunter spent on makeup at Nordstrom’s was deemed “gift baskets for local organizations, (Source: “10 of the ickiest allegations in the Duncan Hunter indictment,” by Amber Phillips, The Washington Post, 8/22/18). When we think we have become inured to their venality, Republicans find novel ways to shock and disgust us. You have to admire the talent.
The avalanche of bad news yesterday caught Republicans flat-footed. Senators Cornyn and Graham desperately tried to misdirect us by claiming that the Cohen plea and Manafort conviction had nothing to do with Russia and did not implicate the president, glossing over the fact that Trump has been implicated in a federal crime. Alan Dershowitz further debased himself by comparing campaign finance violations to jaywalking, and claiming, without evidence, that everybody does it! The absurdity of his comparison is so obvious that one hardly needs a law degree to see it.
Shocking as it is, this Republican crime wave is the apotheosis of an ethos in our culture that the wealthy and the powerful are above the law, free to engage in corruption on an epic scale with impunity. Matty Yglesias makes a persuasive case that our unaccountable laxity prosecuting white collar crime paved the way for our government to be stocked with criminals at the highest levels.
For far too long, we have been willing to accept a system in which some people are too big to jail, while black and brown men languish in Riker’s for months awaiting trial. We have tacitly approved a system that locks black and brown men up for “crimes” that white men make billions from. We sit quietly while convicted felons try to rehabilitate their image by running for re-election, while incarcerated black and brown people manufacture our Victoria’s Secret lingerie for less than a dollar a day. While Michael Cohen is out on a $500,000 bond, prisoners in 17 states are in the midst of waging what they hope will be the largest prison strike ever, demanding an end to prison slavery, to racially discriminatory overcharging, over sentencing and denial of parole, and a renewed focus on rehabilitation. The truth is, we should have been enraged long before now. Face it, Trump is merely the symptom, not the disease.
#Endmassincarcerationnow
#Stoppublicorruption
#VOTE!!!