(C) Ohio Capital Journal This story was originally published by Ohio Capital Journal and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Ohio's JD Vance leads the chorus to cheer on convicted felon Donald Trump's utter lawlessness • Ohio Capital Journal [1] ['Marilou Johanek', 'Terry Smith', 'Isaac Kamola', 'David Dewitt', 'More From Author', 'June', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline'] Date: 2024-06-04 If convicted felon Donald Trump had been acquitted by a jury of his peers he’d be doing a perpetual victory lap and singing the praises of the judicial process that exonerated him. His backup choir of pathetic sycophants, led by Ohio’s always craven junior senator J.D. Vance and the state’s least productive but always performative congressman Jim Jordan, would provide wall-to-wall media accompaniment. “Justice prevailed, the system worked!” they would crow to any TV camera from now until November. But only if the outcome in the latest Trump trial favored the glowering MAGA god with ridiculous comb-over. Otherwise the system would be derided as a perversion of justice. Due process could not result in Trump’s conviction — just as a free and fair election could not result in Trump’s defeat. (Although both did.) The megalomaniac considers himself too big to fail or be held to account. And the former party of law and order nods in wholesale capitulation to the con. They fall in line behind his knowing grift and deception. If Trump doesn’t win what he wants; the system is rigged. Look at the phony story Trump concocted about massive (nonexistent) voter fraud in 2020 to undermine the legitimacy of an election he lost fair and square. He duped millions of Americans into believing the Big Lie that he won based on zero evidence. His deceit about a rigged election snowballed into a savage insurrection at the U.S. Capitol to violently upend the peaceful transfer of power so Trump could steal another term. In 2024, Trump and his chorus of cringe-worthy bootlickers invented another make-believe narrative to discredit the Manhattan prosecutor, judge, jury, and witnesses assigned to his hush-money case. It was a scorched-earth preemptive attack to set the scene should Trump be convicted by a rigged criminal justice system. That eventual outcome was met with seething contempt by the orange idol furious that he couldn’t game the courtroom like everything else. Never mind that Trump had his day in court. Never mind that unlike many defendants, the disgraced ex-president had the best lawyers money could buy. He was accused of falsifying business records in the commission of a crime. The 34 felony counts sprung from his scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through hush money payments to a porn star — who said the two had sex when Trump’s third wife was home with a newborn. The coverup to conceal the scandal from voters in the waning days of the 2016 campaign came on the heels of another scandalous affair where Trump was caught on tape bragging about being a sexual predator. In his New York trial, abundant evidence of his criminality was presented by the prosecution and corroborated by witnesses. Trump declined to testify but his defense team battled on his behalf. Twelve randomly selected citizens sat through it all, took studious notes to connect the dots and rendered a unanimous verdict of guilt. The defendant promised to appeal. It’s his right under the law he disrespects to delegitimize. His MAGA Republican fascist party, which has abdicated all standards (moral and otherwise) in service to their convicted felon, is openly dismissive of the judicial system, a cornerstone of the Republic, because it had the temerity to prosecute and duly convict a criminal defendant named Trump. Federal and state Republicans disparage as a “sham” and “travesty” the impartial adjudication of the law based on objective facts that found Trump guilty as charged. They reject the bedrock principle in America that no one is above the law. Their unprincipled lawbreaker is beyond reproach. His conviction on all counts was a bridge too far. On Team Trump the constitutional tenet that we are a nation of laws, not men, does not apply to the presumptive GOP presidential nominee/criminal tax fraudster/coup plotter/adjudicated rapist-defamer/classified documents hoarder-obstructionist/ newly convicted felon. The rest of us, on the other hand, collectively consent to abide by and respect our legal and judicial system as an unspoken civic pact—especially when we disagree with it. But MAGA Republicans in Ohio and the country who stand back and stand by their avatar of authoritarianism, broke that pact. They got behind the fascist enterprise fronting Trump that is consumed not with what is right or just under the law, but only power and winning. Certainly that was underscored by the gerrymandered Republican juggernaut at the Ohio Statehouse last week. The day the Trump verdict dropped, Republican lawmakers conspired to hastily pass a measure of arbitrary and likely unconstitutional restraints on grassroots groups spearheading statewide citizen initiatives to the ballot. The pointedly retaliatory provisions aim to thwart advancement of future citizen initiatives (particularly one to end Ohio gerrymandering moving to the fall ballot) after the success of last year’s Issue 1 campaigns. The contrived power grab to weaken our direct democracy with a bogus threat cooked up by the always underhanded Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman (as a bargaining chip to extend a ballot deadline for the Biden campaign) was the real sham and travesty of that low day. The extremist legislature is rigged but just the way the autocratic supermajority likes it; unaccountable and steeped in dark money corruption where, as Huffman once boasted “We can kind of do what we want.” Like the convicted felon who empowers them to do their worst. [END] --- [1] Url: https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2024/06/04/ohios-jd-vance-leads-the-chorus-to-cheer-on-convicted-felon-donald-trumps-utter-lawlessness/ Published and (C) by Ohio Capital Journal Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/ohiocapitaljournal/