Trying Trump by Resignation Letter Is Disgraceful By Charles C. W. Cooke
https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/03/trying-trump-by-resignation-letter-is-disgraceful/
“But none of this happened. Trump was not charged “with falsifying business records.” The prosecutors did not secure “an indictment of Mr. Trump.” The matter was not “the highest-profile case ever brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office.” Mr. Trump was not “the first American president to face criminal charges.” And Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz did “not demonstrate that the former president had intended to inflate the value of his golf clubs, hotels and office buildings.”
The leaked judgments of a dissenting Manhattan prosecutor can’t be allowed to negate the presumption of innocence to which every American is entitled.
Y esterday’s New York Times contained a long report on a resignation letter that was leaked from the Manhattan district attorney’s office, in which it is revealed that “one of the senior Manhattan prosecutors who investigated Donald J. Trump,” Mark F. Pomerantz, “believed that the former president was ‘guilty of numerous felony violations’ and that it was ‘a grave failure of justice’ not to hold him accountable.”
Americans of all political stripes should be horrified by this development, and the leaker, whoever he may be, should be summarily fired.
The intent behind this leak is obvious and cynical: It was designed to attach a judgment of official-sounding guilt to a person of interest, without the inconveniences of a trial. In his letter, Pomerantz writes that “the team that has been investigating Mr. Trump harbors no doubt about whether he committed crimes — he did.” But while it may indeed be the case that some members of “the team that has been investigating Mr. Trump [harbor] no doubt about whether he committed crimes,” the “he did” part that follows that statement represents an execrable, illiberal, and unacceptable jump. As a matter of elementary civic hygiene, American citizens should expect their government to put up or shut up. If the government has a case, it should make it in court and accept the decision that flows from that move. If it does not have a case — or if it chooses not to bring one — it should stay quiet. There is no room in our system for leaked letters that assert, as a matter of fact, that presumptively innocent people have committed crimes.
There is no “if . . .” exception to this rule. The Times records that “Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. [Carey] Dunne planned to charge Mr. Trump with falsifying business records, specifically his annual financial statements — a felony in New York State”; it records that “if the prosecutors had secured an indictment of Mr. Trump, it would have been the highest-profile case ever brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office”; it records that the move “would have made Mr. Trump the first American president to face criminal charges”; it records that “Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz were confident that the office could demonstrate that the former president had intended to inflate the value of his golf clubs, hotels and office buildings”; and it records that “Mr. Pomerantz . . . wrote that he believed there was enough evidence to prove Mr. Trump’s guilt ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’”
But none of this happened. Trump was not charged “with falsifying business records.” The prosecutors did not secure “an indictment of Mr. Trump.” The matter was not “the highest-profile case ever brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office.” Mr. Trump was not “the first American president to face criminal charges.” And Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz did “not demonstrate that the former president had intended to inflate the value of his golf clubs, hotels and office buildings.” In his letter, Pomerantz wrote that he and others “believe that the prosecution would prevail if charges were brought and the matter were tried to an impartial jury.” Perhaps so. But, again, charges were not brought, and the matter was not tried before a jury, because the man in charge — the decidedly non-Trumpy DA, Alvin Bragg — did not believe that the case could be proved. Mark F. Pomerantz is 70 years old. He should know a lot better.
Last week, Dan McLaughlin observed that Bragg’s ongoing investigation into Trump is a disgrace in and of itself. “It would,” he wrote, “be entirely appropriate to charge Trump or another former president over a clear, obvious violation of a regularly enforced criminal law.” But this is not how the inquiry has proceeded. Instead, the case has provided us with “a perfect illustration of prosecutors suffering from target fixation, so locked on the man they wanted to prosecute that they lost all sight of how we, as a society, are supposed to decide what crimes deserve prosecution.”
Dan is correct. In America, our officials are supposed to investigate crimes, not people, and the evidence that prompts the investigation of those crimes is not supposed to flow from open-ended inquiries into every aspect of people’s lives. The Times reports that, “initially, Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne had envisioned charging Mr. Trump with the crime of ‘scheme to defraud’,” but when that didn’t work out they “changed course and planned to charge Mr. Trump with falsifying business records — a simpler case that essentially amounted to painting Mr. Trump as a liar rather than a thief.” In this revelation one can detect the famous warning issued by Justice Robert Jackson, who observed in 1940 that “the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power” arises when “the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense.”
There was no good reason for the leaking of Mark Pomerantz’s letter. It contains no allegation of wrongdoing, favoritism, tampering, or bribery. It affirms no incompetence, negligence, or material error. It provides no new evidence, adds no new context, and blows no previously muted whistles. Instead, it offers a set of garden-variety disagreements of the sort that arise in every workplace, and it has been leaked in order to transmute that set of disagreements into a canister of poison gas aimed squarely at the sanctity of the jury box. It must not stand.
Comments are closed.
