“Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.”

– Lavrentiy Beria, Soviet Secret Police Chief 

 

Lavrentiy Beria was Joseph Stalin’s longest serving and most ruthless police chief. One of the great murderers in human history, he was an accomplished sadist against whom several credible allegations of rape surfaced after his death. This “gentleman” often bragged that he could find anyone guilty of something. In truth, actual guilt had little or nothing to do with the ultimate outcome of his prosecutions, usually either a bullet in the back of the neck or a lengthy prison sentence served in the frozen wastes of Siberia.

Beria’s point was that in Soviet Russia, once the secret police had focused their investigative efforts on a particular individual, that individual’s fate was as good as sealed and nothing could save him other than a a change of heart by Stalin himself. In other words, by Beria’s lights you just had to focus your investigative efforts on that one person, and something prosecutable would eventually come to light, or you could just make the whole thing up.

Let us now transport ourselves from the ultimate dystopia of Soviet Russia in the 1930’s and 40’s, to lower Manhattan in 2023. You know, that Manhattan, which is the beating heart of New York City, which is the cultural and financial capitol of America, which is the greatest democracy on Earth. That very same Manhattan, which, with George Soros’ financial help, elected a very far left progressive prosecutor named Alvin Bragg in November of 2021.

Now, Mr. Bragg was the first avowedly progressive D. A. to be elected to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. He quickly became known for refusing to prosecute certain types of crimes (prostitution, resisting arrest, misdemeanor dope, etc.), for dismissing a record number of otherwise prosecutable criminal charges, and for vowing to “get Trump.” As soon as he assumed office, he  and his deputies immediately began making decisions on whom to prosecute and whom to free, based on ideological as opposed to purely prosecutorial considerations. This is a radical departure from standard legal practice in this country, to put it mildly.

Until now, it has always been the prosecutor’s job to impartially investigate the facts to determine whether a crime has been committed, and then determine who committed it. Not so Mr. Bragg, who believes that class considerations and equity require that some crimes be dismissed out of hand, while others be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, indeed far beyond the law if political considerations so require.

And so here we are, for the first time in the two hundred and forty-seven year history of this country, apparently about to witness the indictment of a former president. The barricades are going up around the courthouse in downtown Manhattan as I write these words. When I relate to you the trivial, or shall I say farcical nature of the crime with which President Trump is about to be charged, you will understand the political nature of this prosecution.

President Trump will apparently be charged with the crime of paying $130,000 in hush money to a prostitute in 2016. Now the paying of hush money is not in itself a crime, or if it is under New Yolk state law, this would constitute a minor state misdemeanor of the kind that progressive D. A.’s like Mr. Bragg do not like to prosecute. To compound this charge into a felony, Mr. Bragg must also allege that the hush money payments constituted an illegal campaign donation to President Trump’s campaign, i. e., a violation of federal election law. 

No, I am not making this up! If you don’t believe me, here is what the New York Times had to say about the matter: The Bragg case “hinges on an untested and therefore risky legal theory involving a complex interplay of laws, all amounting to a low level felony.”

As if the fraying bonds which still tie this country together needed any further strain, we are about to witness a legal spectacle which could last up to and through the next presidential election. And just for context, you should know that Mr. Bragg’s predecessor in the Manhattan D. A.’s office, Cyrus Vance, Jr., looked at the same case some years ago and declined to prosecute. As a matter of fact, Mr. Bragg himself initially declined to move forward on the case until he had a change of heart in late 2022.

To resurrect a trivial legal prosecution of such huge political importance on such specious legal grounds is surely proof that Mr. Bragg has higher political aspirations. After all, if this case were not against the Left’s ultimate bogeyman, Donald Trump, and if it were not being filed in the progressive Disney Land once known as New York City, no prosecutor in his right mind would touch it. But I am sure that Mr. Bragg has carefully weighed the matter and decided that the advantages of embarrassing President Trump (the perp walk, the arraignment, the mug shots, etc.) would outweigh the disadvantages of losing the case badly, at least in the fevered minds of the progressive left which governs New York.

For this pending spectacle we have Mr. Bragg and his like-minded progressive legal savants to thank, and if they are not held accountable for this prosecutorial malpractice, our legal system will soon sink to the level of Soviet Russia’s. Lavrentiy Beria must be laughing in his grave…

LOUIS GURVICH, Chairman
Republican Party of Louisiana