For years, Donald Trump has insisted he’s the most persecuted man in America — a victim of courts, prosecutors, and a justice system supposedly “rigged” against him. You can probably say that Trump has loved playing the victim. But when you step back and look at the record, not the campaign lines, not the whiny social media posts, a different picture comes into focus. It’s not a story of a man being treated unfairly. It’s a story of a man who has pushed the limits of the law harder than any president in modern history — and a Supreme Court that has repeatedly stepped in at key moments to give him breaks no other president ever received. All the whining is meant to manipulate the courts and definitely rile up his supporters. Start with the lower courts. Judges appointed by Republicans, Democrats, and even Trump himself have documented a pattern of defiance from Trump and his administration. Not once or twice, but dozens of times. Federal courts found the administration...
When the Justice System Starts Tilting, You Pay Attention There comes a point where you stop chalking things up to coincidence and start looking at the pattern. That is where I have been for a while with the Department of Justice. Not because of one headline or scandal, the whole system feels like it’s leaning in a direction it’s not supposed to lean. Once you see the pattern, you realize that it’s a pattern that’s not right. What makes it even more unsettling is that it’s the party that claims to be the “party of small government” that is also building the biggest machinery of control. You don’t need to be a Democrat or a Republican to notice what is happening. You need to be paying attention. Look back over the last fifty years, and you see a steady pattern. Nixon kept an enemies list of American citizens and used the DOJ and the IRS to go after people on it. Reagan and Bush Sr. expanded federal policing and surveillance under the War on Drugs and protected the Iran-Contra ...