For all Democrats’ screams about Donald Trump’s threat to democracy, their own abuses of the law against him add up to a potent threat in its own right.
Several of the cases are outright ridiculous: Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, for one, opted to resurrect hush-money charges against Trump that his predecessor and federal authorities found too weak.
Bragg accuses The Don of falsifying business records to hide a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels to stay silent about an alleged affair, yet the DA’s charges depend on an application of the law that’s never been used before on anyone.
The alleged wrongdoing took place eight years ago (raising statute-of-limitations issues), and the case just happens to come smack in the middle of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.
Bragg’s star witnesses? A convicted lawyer, Michael Cohen, and Daniels, the former porn star.
In state Attorney General Letitia James’ civil fraud case, Trump did nothing others in his industry don’t do every day; even the judge admits no one was harmed — yet somehow Trump drew a $454 million penalty, which he was required to pay even before he could appeal.
How is that a just, impartial application of the law?
Indeed, Trump’s motions have already won him victories in that case: He and his two sons are no longer barred from leading their company, and he now has to post “only” $175 million before appealing.
The election-interference cases — one brought by special counsel Jack Smith, the other by scandal-scarred Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis — are also stretches.
Yes, Trump’s election denials and Jan. 6 behavior are huge black marks against him, but proving — in a fair trial — that he committed real crimes along the way seems near-impossible.
Bragg, James, and Willis are all elected Democrats playing to their party’s base in their pers . . . prosecutions; the judges and juries also come from heavily Democratic ponds.
The seemingly strongest case is the classified documents one: Trump clearly not only took sensitive government material off to Mar-a-Lago but tried to keep them even after being caught.
But how is prosecution legit when other prosecutors let President Biden, Hillary Clinton, and others slide for similar misdeeds?
Clinton actually destroyed evidence rather than let investigators access the hard drive where she’d stored classified material.
The pattern is overwhelming: prosecutions rife with double standards, suspicious timing, and clear political motives.
All by itself, President Biden let it be known publicly long months ago that he expected Attorney General Merrick Garland to see that Trump faced federal charges badly colors special counsel Smith’s cases.
Americans see Democrats weaponizing the judicial system to keep Trump off the ballot, bankrupt him, and tie him up in court all year: All to subvert the democratic process by kneecapping his campaign.
And that follows other outrageous anti-democratic stunts, like the fake Russiagate probe or muscling social-media companies to suppress The Post’s 2020 Hunter Biden laptop reporting.
It’s enough to make even voters who detest Trump think he may be the lesser evil.
If Democrats thought Trump’s “war on democracy” was the issue that could save Biden, they shouldn’t have waged one of their own.