Victor Davis Hanson absolutely nailed it on Tuesday’s Laura Ingraham show when describing what the problems are now with America’s criminal justice system and why the nomination of Bill Barr has the potential to make such an important difference. It’s so stellar, and needs so little embellishment from me or anyone else, that I’ve transcribed here, so you can ponder it word-for-word…
VDH: “...He’s taking over a Justice Department that’s had a large number of departures and an FBI where at least ten people have been reassigned, retired or fired, so that the agency has lost its reputation, and so has the Department of Justice. But more importantly, his task is to reestablish the concept of equality under the law, because we know that people like James Comey were leaking, Andrew McCabe was leaking, Baker was leaking; we know that FISA courts were deceived; we know that the director of the FBI went before Congress under oath [and] 245 times said he didn’t know or didn’t remember something that --- they bring Trump up to Mueller and if he did that, they would indict him.
“So there’s a perception out there in America, whether it’s warranted or not, that there’s two sets of laws. There’s Mueller’s investigation of Trump that goes over, you know, every type of business, tax relationships, the whole 20 months’ worth of investigation, and then there’s these key players in the FBI and DOJ that were involved in behaviors –- I’m not even getting into the unmasking and leaking of the Mike Flynn or the National Security Council’s leaking of unmasked names or the Hillary Clinton’s warped probe --- but there’s this perception that there’s no equality under the law, and that’s fatal for a democracy.
“So that’s what he has to do. He has to look at all of this behavior, not just the Mueller investigation, but all of the tangential behavior and ask himself, ‘Was American federal law applied equally across the board, regardless of a person’s stature, income, money or position,’ and so far, that hasn’t been true.”
This is it. This is what I hear about every day from dismayed readers and from people I talk with, and he has captured it very well. We all see that the American justice system is broken, with "friends" dealt with in one way and "enemies" (or simply the unconnected) dealt with in a vastly different way. The only thing I might add is that I think this goes beyond mere “perception” –- that what we are witnessing REALLY IS a justice system with two different sets of criteria, depending on who the person is. That makes it all the worse. The good news is that Barr, in his testimony on Tuesday, certainly gave the impression of someone who cares deeply about equal treatment under the law. Time will tell.
Victor Davis Hanson wrote a great piece five months ago on this subject –- that is to say, a two-tiered justice system –- that is so timely it could have been written yesterday. I include it here.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/double-standards-of-postmodern-justice/
Permalink: https://www.mikehuckabee.com/2019/1/victor-davis-hanson-nails-it
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