The rule of law,
the abuse of power,
and justice denied
The film Just Mercy opened this week. It is the story of a man, Walter McMillan, who was convicted of murder in Alabama,1987. The trial was a sham, all exculpatory evidence hidden, the one witness a felon who traded his false testimony for a shorter sentence. This gross miscarriage of justice happened because the power in the town -- the sheriff, the police and the DA -- all conspired to convict McMillan in order to bring closure to the community for the murder of a young girl.
Enter Bryan Stevenson, a young Harvard-trained lawyer who founds the Equal Justice Initiative to help those on death row, most of them having had little or no legitimate representation. Without totally revealing the most important details of the story, suffice it to say that those most guilty of illegality, those who were complicit in the railroading of an innocent man, suffer no consequences for their participation in their crimes that sent that man to prison; he was sent to death row a year before his trial!
Watching the story unfold, it is hard not to see the parallels between the McMillan case and the Russia collusion hoax to destroy Donald Trump. None of the many persons involved in the coup attempt have yet to suffer any consequences for their treasonous actions.
Yes, Bill Barr and John Durham are allegedly hard at work on the deep investigation of the origins of the hoax, the many constitutional transgressions committed by too many people in positions of power.
But, as time goes by it becomes increasingly easier to believe that none of them will be ever charged with the any of their bad acts against the country. The IG Report on FISA abuse has yielded nothing but a too-late-to-be-meaningful scathing letter from FISA judge Rosemary Collyer and an email this week from current FBI director Wray about some "policy changes," along with better training and new protocols. The DOJ just hired David Kris, an Obama/Holder-era member of the hoax team whose job it was to smear Devin Nunes.
Why on earth would Barr stand for this if his job is to root out corruption and get to the bottom of the coup attempt?
Why is Bruce Ohr still employed? He was one of the top tier orchestrators of the collusion hoax. Why has Rod Rosenstein not been indicted? We now know that he led the illegal intrusion into then-CBS correspondent Sharyl Attkisson's computers.
Yes, the gears of justice grind slowly, but this is ridiculous. More and more Americans, especially those of us who support President Trump, are losing hope that anyone will be held responsible for the most horrific political scandal in U.S. history. It seems to have become the rule that those who attain bureaucratic power get to keep it no matter how appalling the nature of their crimes. The virulent racists, from the cops to the DAs, who sentenced numerous innocent men to death row in the South all kept their jobs and most likely continued their evil ways just as our high-profile traitors at the CIA, FBI and DOJ have kept theirs. The sheriff who knowingly charged McMillan with murder in 1987 was re-elected six times after his wrongdoing was revealed; rather like Biden's re-election after numerous ethical lapses, plagiarism the least of them. Peter Schweizer's new book is likely to expose much more serious crimes of the Biden family.
Those of us who grew up in America, were educated in public schools, were taught the Constitution, the glory and wisdom of the Founders as well as the scourge of slavery, the Civil War fought to end it at the expense of 600k lives, and the success of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, are not surprised to learn of the many betrayals of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; those breeches are part and parcel of our history.
What is distressing is to be reminded how long those betrayals continued and continue to this day. To learn that what happened to men like McMillan and other men like him was still happening in the late 1980s and early 1990s is shocking though probably not to the people who live there. That people like James Brennan, James Comey, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, Bruce Ohr and Nellie, et. al. are all still free as birds and tweeting their days away, maligning President Trump day after day after day is monstrous, an insult to our rule of law. The film Just Mercy is difficult to endure but is a thirty-two year-old reminder that far too many of the people who rise to power over others egregiously abuse it. If Barr and Durham do not indict those who nearly succeeded in overturning an election, who are still trying to destroy Trump's presidency, the grand experiment that is America will be over for it will demonstrate that we are no longer a nation of laws but a third world country run by crooks and thugs.