In his Nobel Prize winning book, The Gulag Archipelago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote about how the leaders of the Soviet Union weaponized the judiciary against their political opponents – oftentimes, sending them to Siberian Gulags for the rest of their lives on spurious trumped-up charges. Most of the time, the charges against political prisoners were ambiguous ‘conspiracies’, ‘crimes against the state’, ‘suspicion of espionage’. And there was rarely just one charge. It was usually three or four charges levied against their political opponents. There were speech crimes, thought crimes and crimes of association. After experiencing life in the Soviet Gulags, Solzhenitsyn wrote, “the old proverb does not lie: Look for the brave in prison, and the stupid among the political leaders!”
Yesterday, Donald Trump was indicted for the third time during an election season in which the polls have him as the frontrunner over the incumbent President, Joe Biden. And not coincidently, it is Biden’s DOJ that has indicted Trump twice. Love him or hate him, you have to admit that Donald J Trump has courage. The man is facing over one hundred years in federal prison, and not by an impartial judiciary, but by rabid partisans whose only goal is to use their vast power to see to it that Trump dies behind bars. And the surest way for Donald Trump to avoid that fate is to drop out of the Presidential election for if he does, these indictments will surely go away and be forgotten. But Trump fights on. He is not fighting for his over-inflated ego. He’s already a billionaire. He already has the President of the United States skin on his wall. He already received 74 million votes, the most legal votes by any candidate in our history.
He is fighting, not for himself, and not exclusively for us, the people. He is fighting for our country, and future generations of Americans. Regardless of what you think of Donald Trump, and regardless of whether he is re-elected in 2024, defeated, or spends the rest of his life in jail, his greatest accomplishment as President, beyond the economy, oil independence, the Middle Eastern peace deals or the Chinese tariffs, is that he exposed the corruption that is Washington, D.C. He has shown to the world that our national politics are no better than Venezuela or Cuba or Russia or even China. We just know how to put on a better face.
Our “elected” officials shroud themselves in the Constitution without the intent of following any of the principles to the letter or even the spirit in which they were written. They give grand speeches elucidating the high-sounding principles in our Constitution when it serves their purposes, and then completely ignore or defy those same principles when its politically expedient. Donald Trump has laid this all bare. He may be the least corrupt of the major political players in Washington, yet he is the one staring at over 40 indictments and 100 years in prison. That tells you everything you need to know.
The Bidens and the Clintons have been selling political influence to foreign agents for decades and there are no indictments coming their way. Mitch McConnell has sold out America to China and to his wife’s family for over 20 years, amassing a fortune of over $50 million, and not a word is said about it. Paul Pelosi has been trading stock off of inside information from his wife, former Speaker of the House, Nancy for years, making him a better stock picker than Warren Buffet, and growing their wealth to over $100 million, yet everyone shrugs. When are they going to do an investigation on how Barack Obama has amassed over $135 million since entering the White House.
Donald Trump is not part of the uni-party, and is intent on exposing the uni-party, so he had to be destroyed. The uni-party puts up with Ted Cruz and Jim Jordan because they help to legitimize the facade of American democracy and debate, but if either gets too powerful or too popular, or becomes a real threat, they will be crushed just like Trump. So, they will stay in their lane demanding change that will never come. Donald Trump could potentially bring that change or expose the corruption to a point that the change is inevitable, so he cannot be tolerated.
Special Counsel, Jack Smith’s recent indictment read just like some of those old Soviet indictments:
Listen to the buzz words that do not mean anything – “obstruct”, “conspiracy”, “impair”, “impede”, “corrupt”. All words that sound like something important but are wide open to interpretation. None of these words point to an actual overt crime that Trump committed, an actual act. They are thought crimes and speech crimes. Due to their timing in relation to the 2024 election, these indictments by Jack Smith could easily be interpreted as election interference, and since a Presidential election is a “lawful federal government function”, Jack Smith could easily be charged with the same crimes he is charging Trump with – “conspiracy to defraud the United States, by using dishonesty, fraud” or “conspiracy against the right to vote”.
Jack Smith actually wrote those words, “conspiracy to defraud the United States, by using dishonesty, fraud…” So according to Jack Smith, Trump wanted to defraud the government by fraud? That would be like writing, ‘he conspired to murder someone by murdering him.’ Or ‘he planned on robbing the store by robbing it.’ When the best way that he can articulate the charges is filled with this much ambiguity and double talk, there is a very good chance that the charges are simply made up.
Smith also wrote in the indictment, “A conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the January 6 congressional proceeding…” Is there a non-corrupt way to obstruct and impede a congressional proceeding? Of course, there is, just do it as a Democrat. You will never be charged. Isn’t that what hundreds of pro-abortionists did in September 2018, when they broke into the Capital and were pounding on the Senate Chambers doors during Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings attempting to stop him from being confirmed? Not one of those people spent a day in jail for doing the same thing that Trump is falsely charged with and facing decades in prison for.
Solzhenitsyn also wrote, “You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.” And that’s all we can do, live in the truth, not “our truth”, but the truth. There are too many liars in the world who are living “their truth.”
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Judd Garrett is a graduate from Princeton University, and a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.