Former president Donald Trump is facing ninety-one criminal charges as he seeks to win back the White House in 2024.
The indictments are the latest battle in a roughly six-year crusade against Trump that first sought to remove him from power through the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, then with espionage charges and impeachments, and that now aims to block him from becoming president again.
The hypocrisies of their effort to convict Trump and block him from holding office again reveal that the motivations are purely political-not born of some commitment to a higher moral or legal principle.
President George Bush launched a war on Iraq without congressional authorization. That is illegal according to Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution, the set of rules Bush swore an oath to uphold. His administration also launched undeclared, and therefore illegal, wars in Afghanistan, Somalia, and Iraq. President Bill Clinton did the same, overseeing illegal military operations in Somalia, Serbia, and Iraq.
President George W. Bush’s administration also conducted warrantless surveillance on American citizens, which is illegal according to the Fourth Amendment, and committed torture, which is prohibited by Section 2340A of Title 18 of the United States Code.
President Barack Obama conducted more illegal wars in Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Mali, and Yemen. In many of those wars, Obama expanded George W. Bush’s policy of giving support to al-Qaeda, which is treason according to Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution. Obama also ordered the assassination of an American citizen in Yemen who had not been tried or even convicted of a crime. The Sixth Amendment makes that illegal.
Combined, these illegal wars have killed millions of people. They are appalling crimes of which Trump is also guilty. His administration continued the wars in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen despite his running on a more isolationist foreign policy. Yet he’s not being charged for any of that. The crimes he’s facing charges for are far less serious, but they are more unique to Trump.
According to legal positivists, law is what the sovereign political authority says it is.
The way to get Trump is not to show he did anything immoral or wrong but to prove he technically broke some rule made up by members of an earlier political class.
The crimes he's facing charges for are far less serious, but they are more unique to Trump.
By refusing to bring charges against Trump that could also be brought against the presidents they like, the political class has shown that its aims are political.
https://mises.org/wire/lets-examine-some-real-crimes-committed-presidents
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