We wrote here and elsewhere about the disgraceful video produced by the Seditious Six, Democratic members of Congress who urged service members to disobey orders coming from the Trump administration. The Six tried to avoid legal jeopardy by referring to “illegal orders,” but afterward admitted that they had no knowledge of any such “illegal orders.” In context, it was clear that the Six were trying to stimulate unlawful “resistance” to the Trump administration within the military.
Legally, though, any criminal case against the Six would be thin. The Department of Justice sought indictments of the Six from a grand jury in Washington, D.C. The New York Times was delighted to report that the grand jury declined to indict the Six:
Federal prosecutors in Washington sought and failed on Tuesday to secure an indictment against six Democratic lawmakers who posted a video this fall that enraged President Trump by reminding active-duty members of the military and intelligence community that they were obligated to refuse illegal orders, four people familiar with the matter said.
It was remarkable that the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington — led by Jeanine Pirro, a longtime ally of Mr. Trump’s — authorized prosecutors to go into a grand jury and ask for an indictment of the six members of Congress, all of whom had served in the military or the nation’s spy agencies.
More remarkable is the fact that the Six had the temerity to make the video. But this is the point I want to address:
But it was even more remarkable that a group of ordinary citizens sitting on the grand jury in Federal District Court in Washington forcefully rejected Mr. Trump’s bid to label their expression of dissent as a criminal act warranting prosecution.
I don’t think it was remarkable at all. The D.C. grand jury probably consisted entirely or nearly entirely of Democrats. Washington is a politicized town, and the Democrats there tend to be highly partisan. Any time the Trump administration finds itself before a grand jury or trial jury in D.C., on any remotely political issue, it can expect to lose, simply on partisan grounds.
Whatever the merits of the case against the Seditious Six, this is a serious problem because some cases have to be brought in the District. There is little prospect of objective justice being rendered by either judges or juries in that venue, where the Trump administration is concerned.
This is almost as true in New York City. As I have written before, I have no idea why, in 2020, President Trump’s Department of Justice charged Nicolas Maduro with drug trafficking and other crimes in Manhattan. The Department of War snatched Maduro in a brilliant operation a month ago and he was transported to the U.S. to stand trial in Manhattan–before a judge appointed by Bill Clinton and a jury composed entirely, or almost entirely, of Democrats who are hostile to the administration. I would love to be proved wrong, but I doubt that Maduro can be convicted in a Manhattan courtroom, no matter how overwhelming the evidence may be. When the choice is between President Trump and a murdering narco-terrorist, most Democrats will side with the murdering narco-terrorist.
We see the same bias at work in civil cases. Sarah Palin can’t get a Manhattan jury to award her damages in what should be an open and shut defamation case against the New York Times. And in D.C., a jury awarded Michael Mann $1 in actual damages, but $1 million in punitive damages against Mark Steyn (the punitive damage award was later taken away by the judge, and Mann wound up owing Steyn money due to sanctions imposed on Mann for presenting false evidence). This was after Mann’s lawyer brought out the fact that Mark had guest hosted on the radio for Rush Limbaugh, and the man who became the jury foreman passed the judge a note to the effect that he had been unaware of the association, but he detested Limbaugh.
Our public life has been distorted in many ways by the insane hatred that has been unleashed by the Democratic Party, but the corruption of our judicial system–including, of course, the many illegal orders that Democratic Party judges have entered against the Trump administration–is one of its worst consequences.
