Donald Trump martyrdom and the horror of false accusations *UPDATED*
The unproven calumnies aimed at Donald Trump’s head are a reminder that, when governments, corporations or mobs deal in false accusations, justice is dead.
Within the past few days, Bob Woodward dropped a book claiming to have first, or second, or third hand information from anonymous people who are, like, totally in the know, and thereby backing up Omarosa’s claim that Donald Trump is a crazy meanie. With perfect timing, an anonymous, but nevertheless really important person, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in which s/he announced that Trump is a crazy meanie, so that the person has been forced to mount a seditious movement . . . er, sorry, a Deep State movement . . . er, sorry, a resistance . . . er, sorry, a “steady state” movement (yes, really — “steady state”) to undermine the will of those American people who just happened to elect Donald Trump.
From the moment Trump got the Republican nomination, and with increasing hysteria and ferocity after he won, he’s been called a traitor, a Hitler, an idiot, a drooling idiot, a madman, a sex-crazed madman, a Nazi, a fascist, a criminal — and those are the nice things that we’re hearing about him. Oh, and again, these accusations come with striking regularity from anonymous sources.
I don’t see any of those things when I look at Trump. Instead, I see someone like my dear departed client. My friend was brilliant, chaotic, irascible, and one of the hardest workers I’ve ever seen, a man to whom vacations were anathema.
My friend also hated yes-men. Instead, he forced people, often rudely or brutally, to challenge his ideas. Sometimes he went his own way, but just as often he listened to other people’s positions and acted upon them. He was a difficult man to work for, but a strong and loyal friend. More than that, he sharpened my brain and elicited from me the best thinking I could offer anyone as a legal adviser. I was my best, smartest self when I worked for him. You can imagine how I miss him.
Trump is even more brilliant than my friend, and more persuasive and manipulative. I actually think he has as good a chance as any man on earth to bring the Deep State down rather than to be done-in by that same Deep State. Moreover, even as the media, Hollywood, and the Democrat Party (all heads of the same Leftist hydra) hurl non-stop, bizarre, anonymous, unfounded accusations at Trump, the American people are may possibly notice something interesting about this brilliant, difficult man: No matter the chaos leading to them (a stimulating, abrasive process), his actions are rational and, even better, really effective.
Leftists naturally insist that it was just another Obama miracle that, the very moment Trump stepped into office, all of Obama’s policies, which hitherto had failed, suddenly blossomed into effectiveness. Sane people, though, know there is no such magical coincidence.
Instead, Kurt Schlicter’s normals (that would be you and me) think that Trump’s policies are responsible for the bursting economy (which especially benefits minorities); the low jobless rate (especially benefiting minorities); the “tariff war” that resulted in Europe, China, and Mexico making huge concessions; the military demise of ISIS; the economic collapse in Iran; the long-awaited dismissal of Palestinian grievances and the end of subsidies for terror; the reinstatement of civil rights for college men; and North Korea’s willingness to engage with South Korea and give up its nukes.
Each of these events followed on the heels of Trump’s policies, and we saw nothing of them — NOTHING — during eight Obama years. Moreover, all of them followed after Trump made a u-turn on Obama-era policies.
For this reason, I hope Trump’s successes will (I hope) derail the endless false accusations.
However, while I believe Trump will triumph, what I’m seeing with him reminded me of false accusations against ordinary people who lack his power, his brilliance, his wealth, and his persuasive skills. These are the people who are brought down by venal government agencies, giant corporate entities, and the social justice mobs.
I’ve written before about false accusations in a post I did about Child Protective Services. Since I wrote that post, which details several instances of people wrongly accused of abusing their children, I worked with a client preparing a heavily documented demand letter on a city that has a CPS agency that’s completely run amok. In service to intersectionality, it routinely returns to drug-addicted, abusive mothers children who are in safe homes with other family members, because the mothers are female or members of some race other than white. These children are pawns in the service of hard-Left ideologically driven agencies.
Decades ago, I also worked on a case in which a man disagreed with a minority woman who held a position superior to his. She could simply have reported him for insubordination. Instead, she falsely accused him of major acts of sexual harassment. She backed it up with an affidavit from an even more junior women in the organization who claimed to have witness the sexually-based verbal abuse and intimidation. When I spoke to the young woman, she admitted that she had lied because her job was threatened.
It ought to have been a no-brainer to get rid of the matter, but as is the case today with so many young men false accused of rape at America’s colleges and universities, it was a nightmare to deal with the institution. Its employees lied; its attorneys lied; it withheld documents; it threatened other employees to suborn perjury; etc. In other words, it was a microcosm of what goes on today, whether on campus or in dealing with the FBI and the DOJ if you’re unlucky enough to be Mike Flynn, Carter Page, or anyone else caught up in the Mueller abattoir. Mike Flynn, almost certainly afraid that Mueller would destroy the life of Flynn’s son, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, even though the FBI agents working the case acknowledged that he hadn’t lied.
In the case of my client, wee ended up settling for a purged record. We did so because my client lacked the company’s deep pockets and couldn’t afford the attorneys fees. He also could not handle the professional threat constantly hanging over his head.
I also know people here in Marin with sons’ whose lives have been destroyed by the man-hating Title IX offices at college campuses throughout America. There, aided in part by the Obama administration’s “Dear Colleague” letter, men are dragged without notice before tribunals that accuse them of horrible, but often unspecific sexual crimes; deny them the right to talk to parents or other counsel; refuse them the right to question accusers or witnesses; and then summarily kick them out of college with the phrase “sex offender” scrawled across their records. Often, these accusations come from young women with mental problems, women who got as drunk as the men but nevertheless are not responsible for their actions while the men are responsible for theirs, and women seeking vengeance for bad break-ups. Thank goodness, as I mentioned above, the Betsy DeVos is trying to bring some sanity back and, even more importantly, young men are suing and winning instead of running away in shame from these Kafka-esque, kangaroo courts.
Just yesterday, even as I was mulling over what I think of Trump’s (and Flynn’s and Page’s, etc.) martyrdom, I found myself having two different conversations in which people told me about prosecutorial overreach. One man told me that his friend fell asleep behind the wheel and killed two people. That’s terrible! Those lives are gone, and everyone who was connected to those people suffered immeasurably. Nevertheless, the guy was not drinking or taking drugs, nor was he consciously making the decision to drive recklessly. Instead, he made the decision (one that’s a bad decision but still one that most of us make) to drive when he was tired. He was definitely guilty of manslaughter, but the prosecutor indicted him for Second Degree murder and tried to put the man in prison for life. Rather than face that, the pleaded out and is halfway through ten years in San Quentin.
The other person to whom I spoke was also on the receiving end of an overzealous prosecutor and ended up pleading out to a lesser charge, not because he was guilty but for the same reason as my client: he couldn’t afford either the legal fees or the risk to his professional reputation. Moreover, because he was dealing with a government agency, it did what those agencies do (see, the FBI and DOJ, above): Its people lied and it refused to turn over relevant documents that would instantly have proven his innocence.
And then of course, there are the social justice mobs who destroy people’s lives in seconds. Only two days ago, we saw the long-knives out for a perfectly innocent lawyer, Zina Bash, who rested her fingers in a way that triggered the madness on the Left. Even as sane people on the Left are trying to rein in the mob, we know that, in the near future and maybe forever, Bash’s life and safety (and that of her family) are at risk. For other examples of the SJW mob, check out John Hawkin’s post on the subject.
All these stories are a reminder that big organizations, whether federal, state, municipal, or corporate, as well as frenzied mobs, have unbelievable power. When people who glory in power, are malicious, and/or dishonest get in the driver’s seat, they can pervert justice in ways that are truly Kafka-esque.
Worse, it’s not just individuals who suffer terrible harm. These events make justice such a travesty that they lead to vigilantism. If the law is manifestly corrupt, people will take power into their own hands, often with results more violent, although in many ways no more cruel, than what flows from corrupt governments or deep-pocketed entities.
I’m betting that all of you have similar stories, whether they happened to you, or to family, friends, or colleagues. If you can do so without violating your own or someone else’s privacy, I’d be interested in hearing what you have to say in the comments.
UPDATE: With perfect timing, I just saw this article in National Review:
Last December, while 11 weeks pregnant, Krissy Noble was attacked in her Arkansas home by an intruder. The intruder had come by the apartment earlier, asking for her husband, but she didn’t know him. On checking, she found out that her husband did not know the man, either; it later turned out that the name he gave Noble was false. When he came by again, she was on the phone with her husband, who said that he would send a neighbor to check out the situation. At the door, however, she was tackled and punched. Breaking free, and fearing for her life — and that of her child — she grabbed her husband’s pistol, which she had placed on the coffee table after the first suspicious visit, and shot the man three times. Then she ran to the neighbor’s apartment and told her to call 911.
When the police arrived, Noble led them to the body and handed over the gun. Police found duct tape and a rolled-up duffel bag on the attacker’s person. Later, having investigated his identity, they discovered that he had a history of assault. Taking these two factors into account, the police concluded “that Krissy Lenae Noble was justified in her use of force and that this is a justifiable homicide, which does not merit the filing of criminal charges with regard to the homicidal event.” Noble gave birth to her child this year.
Last week, however, prosecutors decided to press charges against Noble — not for the killing itself, which is still held to be justified in self-defense, but for illegally possessing a gun at the time she was attacked.
The situation is absurd as it sounds: Nearly a year after the fact, Noble is being charged not for killing someone with a gun, but for holding a gun at the time she killed someone — an exquisite slicing of principle that makes a farce of our system of justice.
Be sure to read the whole thing, because it’s just one more terrible precedent in the destruction of the basic concept of justice in our country.