Following the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald Trump’s private home, Democrats and their media allies who once self-righteously condemned weaponized investigations and the use of law enforcement against political enemies have a lot to answer for. Now that the party in power has spent a year and a half conducting show trials to disparage the entire Republican Party over a riot that happened on Jan. 6, 2021, and has brazenly escalated its persecution of Republicans, conducting surprise raids against people like Trump DOJ official Jeffrey Clark and now the former president himself, silence or even approval from Democrats shows their contemptuous dishonesty. Here are four examples of leftists decrying the threat of prosecution against political opponents, while they tacitly endorse the Biden Justice Department’s attempt to hamstring Trump’s opportunity for re-election.
In a New York Times guest essay in June, Richard L. Hasen wrote that “‘Lock her up!’ chants against Hillary Clinton at 2016 Trump rallies for her use of a personal email server while she was secretary of state were so pernicious because threatening to jail political enemies can lead to a deterioration of democratic values.” In a piece dedicated to arguing for the prosecution of former President Trump — a far more serious step than chants at a rally — he admitted, “If each presidential administration is investigating and prosecuting the last, respect for both the electoral process and the legal process may be undermined.”
In a New York Times article in February, German Lopez criticized authoritarian regimes for jailing opponents to interfere with elections. “Authoritarians have also abandoned pretenses of democratic norms,” Lopez wrote. “Putin, as well as rulers in Nicaragua, Venezuela and elsewhere, once tried to at least maintain the appearance of free and fair elections. But now they regularly jail political opponents, denying the opposition the ability to campaign.”
Dave Aronberg, a Florida state attorney and former Democrat state legislator, said on MSNBC in October 2020 that Trump was “going into that tyrant mode” by calling for his opponents to be arrested. “It’s actually pretty common in countries that have dictators to jail their political opponents,” he said. “Remember, he has an affinity for Erdogan in Turkey. … In Russia, Vladimir Putin does it all the time. Kim Jong-Un jails them and kills them.”
On CNN last June, Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi herself criticized the Trump Justice Department over allegations that prosecutors “subpoenaed Apple for data from the accounts of House Intelligence Committee Democrats along with their staff and family members as part of a leak investigation.” Pelosi said that this went “even beyond Richard Nixon.” Regarding claims that Attorneys General Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr at the time did not know about the investigations, she said that was “beyond belief” and “another manifestation of [the Trump Justice Department’s] rogue activity.”
“This is just out of the question,” Pelosi said, painting the leak investigation as “undermining the rule of law.” “No matter who’s president, whatever party, this cannot be the way it goes.”
