Democrats are jumping for joy at the prospect of Donald Trump finally getting hooked, like Al Capone, on some kind of — any kind of — criminal charge.
But their own political idols — namely, the Clintons or Bidens — could one day be gored by a hyperpartisan district attorney in search of a crime, no matter how picayune.
Democratic Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s case against Trump is so convoluted that even the Washington Post thinks it’s a stretch — and one that sets an ominous precedent. It threatens to open a Pandora’s box of political indictments against former presidents and other elected officials, as well as their family members, by local prosecutors seeking to settle political scores.
Plenty for DAs to probe
What could DAs go after top Democrats for? Where to start. There’s no shortage of scandals.
Let’s take the Clinton Foundation, described by whistleblowers as the largest unprosecuted fraud ever. Bill and Hillary Clinton registered it as a tax-exempt charity, but have used it as their own personal “piggy bank.”
The foundation keeps offices in Little Rock, Ark., where new Pulaski County DA Will Jones is a Republican who last year beat a George Soros-backed Democrat for the job. He might be able to get creative with a tax fraud case against the Clintons, who have potentially stiffed local coffers of millions in corporate income and other taxes.
Over the objections of local anti-tax advocates, the Clintons allegedly pressured Little Rock officials to float close to $20 million in bonds to buy land and construct the building housing the supposedly nonprofit foundation along with the Clinton Presidential Library.
What’s more, whistleblowers have accused Clinton Foundation officials — including the former president — of using tax-exempt donations for personal use, including private travel, which they have denied. Comingling such funds is illegal.
Other red states that could manufacture indictments against Democrats include Florida and Tennessee, where President Biden’s brother Jimmy Biden has gotten into hot water for allegedly defrauding health care companies (which he has denied).
Jimmy allegedly conned the founder of Fort Lauderdale-based Americore Health into thinking he could be a rainmaker based on his big name, and snagged a corner office at the headquarters, where he displayed framed photos of himself with then-Vice President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama.
But instead of bringing in business, Biden allegedly shook down Americore for personal loans he used for repairs on a family vacation home in South Florida, among other things, according to court papers.
Biden allegedly promised his partners at Americore he could get them a big influx of capital from his and Hunter Biden’s Chinese connections, but he used that cash instead to go on a spending spree. His shenanigans left Americore facilities in such financial disarray that at least one of its hospitals, located in Ellwood City, Pa., had to stop paying workers in 2018, prompting local authorities to open a criminal investigation of its finances the next year.
If he were so inclined, the local Lawrence County, Pa., DA could follow in Bragg’s footsteps and open a grand jury probe of Biden.
A pair of medical clinics in Tennessee and Alabama have also accused Jimmy Biden of fraud, which he has denied.
The Bragg playbook
To be sure, nobody is insisting on ginning up charges against prominent Democrats as Bragg has done against former President Trump, the GOP front-runner for election to the White House.
The point is that what Bragg is doing could now happen anywhere.
“You can be sure there are prosecutors across Florida and Texas right now who are looking for a state-law hook into the Biden family,” warned Tom Fitton, president of watchdog group Judicial Watch.
And the moment such an indictment is unsealed, Democrats and their media propagandists will lose their minds.
But never forget: They started it. They are the ones who weaponized grand juries against political foes and sent us all down the slippery slope to a banana republic.
In the past, local authorities thought twice about bringing novel indictments against national politicians. Bragg and his Democratic co-conspirators removed that taboo. It’s now open season.
Bragg has been gunning for Trump from the get-go. In 2021, he even campaigned on targeting Trump. Before recently locking her account, wife Jamila Ponton Bragg even bragged on Twitter that her husband was going to nail Trump on some unspecified felonies. Why? Because she felt Trump was “racist.”
Once he got into office, Bragg ignored statutes of limitations and resurrected a seven-year-old misdemeanor case against Trump that other prosecutors had shunned. Then he trod on shaky grounds of jurisdictional authority to turn it into a felony based on federal campaign finance laws.
In short, he cooked up a crime. But his legal alchemy is sure to backfire on Democrats in the future, with prosecutorial retaliation after retaliation.
Paul Sperry is a senior correspondent for RealClearInvestigations. Twitter: @paulsperry_
This content was originally published here.
