Déjà vu All Over Again
By Brent E. Zepke, Esq.
For President Trump, it’s déjà vu all over again
Listening to the late New York Yankee catcher Yogi Berra say, “It’s like déjà vu all over again,” always made me laugh. Yogi delivered many such sayings, but this one is particularly applicable in the case(s) against former President Donald Trump.
Case in point: on December 26, 2023, a headline read, “Former GOP Rep. Fortenberry’s Conviction of Lying to Feds reversed by Appeals Court after defense lawyers argued FBI ‘set up’ congressman”.
Jeff Fortenberry, a congressman from Nebraska who had served since 2005, after voluntarily giving two interviews, one in his home in Nebraska and one in D.C., to the FBI, was indicted after he couldn’t remember all the details about a conversation with an FBI informant. After he was convicted by a Los Angeles jury for making false statements to the FBI, he resigned from Congress.
Similar charges brought by the FBI against General Flynn caused him to lose his position as National Security Advisor to President Trump.
In overturning the Fortenberry conviction, the ultra-liberal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that the “trial took place in a state where no charged crime was committed, and before a jury drawn from a vicinage of the federal agencies that investigated the defendant. The Constitution does not permit this.”
Every first-year law student knows that “forum shopping” is not permitted, so what does it say about the judge in L.A. who permitted the case to be tried in his court?
Well, Nebraska voters were deprived of their elected representative when Fortenberry resigned; he had to pay attorney’s fees and watch his family suffer.
As for the DOJ or FBI, what exactly did they “suffer?”
It depends on their objectives. The agents for the DOJ/FBI were paid; their families were safe, and the GOP lost a representative in Congress.
Was there precedence for this?
Yes, in 2008 the DOJ/FBI scheduled a case against Alaska GOP Senator Ted Stevens for an alleged crime in Alaska, so that a D.C. jury could reach a verdict just before the 2008 election. When Stevens was convicted, his opponent Democrat opponent Mark Begich edged him out in the election based on a campaign that Stevens, if elected, could not serve.
Post-election, the Ninth Circuit reversed the conviction because of the DOJ’s misconduct in withholding and falsifying evidence. Again, whether the DOJ lost depends on their objectives. Alaskans were deprived of the Republican Senator they preferred, Stevens paid attorney’s fees, Begich became the deciding vote for Obamacare, and the DOJ lawyers were reassigned.
Are there any current examples of this type of behavior by the DOJ?
Yes.
Consider President Trump.
Special Counsel Jack Smith, after being appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, forum shopped for a Grand Jury in ultra-liberal D.C. to obtain an indictment against former President Trump alleging crimes involving documents. Since President Trump and the documents were in Florida, the case had to be brought there. So, Smith returned to the friendly confines of a D.C. Grand Jury and obtained an indictment against Trump for his alleged involvement in the activities of January 6, 2021. The judge in the case, Tanya Chutkan, was appointed by President Obama and is the only judge who has given longer sentences than even the DOJ requested in the January 6 cases.
Smith was so desperate to find evidence against Trump that he swore to a court that he needed to secretly obtain it – meaning Trump’s lawyers would not be able to argue the legality of it. The Special Counsel also represented to a court that presidential candidate Trump was a “flight risk.”
Based on this representation, what does that say about the judge who granted the warrant?
The objectives of the DOJ and the judge became obvious when the trial was scheduled for March 4, 2024, the day before Super Tuesday when 15 states hold their Republican primaries or caucuses. It was even more obvious when the Special Counsel asked the Supreme Court to create a special expedited procedure so they could keep Trump in court during Super Tuesday.
The Supreme Court rejected their filing and sent it to an appellate court along with an amicus (friend of the court) brief.
And that, my friends was déjà vu all over again.
It’s the Democrat smear campaign. They boast lies and fiction, twist or cherry pick statements to purposefully to skew an election. When that fails they just call you a racist with no justification.
The Dems know it’s about public opinion and timing and it’s been done for decades.
Unfortunate that is how Bullies operate. Dems are school yard bullies manipulating people because they know they are failures and cannot stand on their own merits. And the people are not very intelligent, they fall for the lies almost every time.
Like when they clean up the homeless from a district right before an election or claim that wearing a piece of cloth will save your life, the list goes on.
Of course, one can chew gum and walk at the same time, meaning you can feel these prosecutions are an abuse of the system and also feel Trump recklessly tried to overturn an election without any real factual evidence of widespread cheating (according to his own paid experts) that would have changed the outcome. We all know in Trump's mind it's impossible for him to lose an election. If he loses these upcoming Republican primaries he will undoubtedly claim they were rigged, like how he said the Iowa caucus was stolen in 2016 when Cruz won it. The most grievous thing he did was insistently ask his Vice President to stop the counting of electoral votes at the deadline and then throw him under the bus when Pence did the right thing. The real question is why support a pathological liar like Trump when we have the very able DeSantis who may be the best Republican candidate for president since Reagan.