For the last few years, Democrats and their allies in the media have tried and failed to pin criminal charges against one man whom they hate with a virulent passion: our 45th president, Donald J. Trump. Indeed, it appears that their one single goal is to demonize, attack, and destroy Trump, whatever the cost. This could be best summed up in this article from the Miami Herald, written by a vehement anti-Trump propagandist named Gregg Barak:
'On Jan. 6, 2021, a lame duck tried to stop the official certification of Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States. Several days later President Trump was impeached for a second time — for inciting an insurrection, only to be acquitted on Feb. 13 by his obedient Republican allies in the U.S. Senate.
Effectively, this was the second “jury nullification” carried out by these senators in 12 months. Once again, Trump was found to be above the law while his criminality was normalized.
Benjamin Bugsy Siegel and John Joseph Gotti Jr. are two of the more notorious bosses in the history of American organized crime. Few people in their criminal orbits showed disloyalty or publicly crossed them. These mobsters were feared for their ruthlessness and their willingness to exert undue influence on others. Siegel and Gotti were proficient at using money and resources that did not belong to them. These outlaws were judicious in counteracting their illegal conduct and were rarely accountable for damages done.
Their murderous ways aside, these 20th century kingpins had nothing on Trump and his unconventional 21st century racketeering. The gangsters had the ability to corrupt people and neutralize the forces of legal regulation. As the CEO of the Trump Organization and former president — and because of his pernicious vindictiveness, as well as his enthusiasm for abusing the law — sycophants have capitulated to Boss Trump.
With little opposition or push back, Trump, the House Freedom Caucus and the MAGA base steamrolled the Republican Party. He took full control of the party apparatus in less than 18 months, with a lot of in-your-face rudeness, little principle and a tax break for the very rich and powerful in corporate America. Less than three years later, a divided nation found itself living in the aftermath of a failed coup d’état.
Currently, from his winter residence in Palm Beach — his Mar-a-Lago golf club and catering facility — Trump Donald still holds court and has absolute power over the GOP. Should Congress fail to pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act in the next 30 days and should Trump not find himself wearing an orange jumpsuit in the next 30 months, then by January 2025, the mobster-in-chief and his comrades in lawlessness likely will find themselves dividing their time between the White House, Palm Beach and Bedminster during the summer — whether he fairly wins the 2024 presidential election or corruptly steals it.
As a criminologist who scrutinizes the pathology of harmful individuals, the construction of crime and punishment, and the formalities of unequal justice, I wanted to know how and why Trump was able to operate a lawless enterprise within an incorporated world of entrepreneurial entities from 1980 and up through the 2016 presidential election, and subsequently from within the the White House.
I have investigated the “life course” of Trump, a celebrity con artist, a master gaslighter and a shrewd racketeer. I have also examined three generations of Trump businesses, habitual mayhem and struggles for economic and political power. In a nutshell, over the course of five decades, Trump’s modus operandi of unceasing lawlessness has advanced his business and political career.
These techniques were made possible by abuses of power, and legal impunity. Over these years, Trump has been accused of sexual assault, tax evasion, money laundering, non-payment of employees, insurrection, and the defrauding of tenants, customers, contractors, investors, bankers, and charities. Though Trump is a generalist and multi-opportunity offender, the most fitting label is that of racketeer.
These rackets have often involved internally owned shell companies created for the purposes of illegally sustaining and transferring the family wealth. Likewise, his financial accounting arrangements regularly engage in various forms of looting by maintaining, for example, two sets of cooked books brought to light most recently when the Manhattan District Attorney’s office criminally indicted the Trump Organization and its comptroller Allen Weisselberg for allegedly falsifying business records, tax fraud and committing a criminal scheme to defraud.
Several of their racketeering operations circulated through and within the Trump International Hotel a few blocks away from the White House, including Trump’s work-arounds of the Foreign Emoluments Clause, his foreign and domestic pay-to-play schemes and his biggest money-making scam of all — his anti-democracy fundraising campaigns, such as Stop the Steal, that had raised in less than one year more than $250 million.'
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Personally, I do not believe for one minute that Trump ever was, let alone is, a 'racketeer,' no more than I believe him to be a criminal in any sense of the word. If he were such a 'racketeer,' or indeed any other sort of criminal, where is the concrete evidence of it? After all, the Democrats have spent over five years trying to find such evidence against Trump, and so far, all their attempts have turned up nothing. So, it could truly be argued that such criminal charges as the Democrats accuse Trump of have no evidence to back them up and that such charges are merely a pretext created by Democrats in order to disqualify Trump from seeking the presidency in the future.
Another thing which interests me from this man's diatribe against Trump is how he compares him to criminals and mobsters like Gotti and Bugsy Siegel. It is almost farcical to even remotely compare a man like Donald Trump to such criminals as these, for again, there is no evidence to prove he is anything of the sort. Bugsy Siegel and Gotti were murderers and racketeers involved in organized crime, and their lives were steeped in violence. Indeed, their lives ended violently. But I never heard of Trump arranging for someone's murder, nor have I ever heard of him dealing in or with organized crime.
In all truth, it can be said that the Democrats' hatred for Donald Trump is greater than their concern for the American people or for the rule of law. Indeed, their obsession with destroying Donald Trump may prove to be their permanent undoing as a political party in this nation. Personally, I think the Democrats will hang themselves with the same rope they intend to hang around Trump's neck. But then, that is just my educated opinion. Time will tell if I am right in this prediction or not.
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