OPINION:
As Americans paid their taxes Monday, a historic event began in New York.
In a moment worthy of “On the Waterfront,” the great movie about corruption and brutality in the Big Apple, the New York system will attempt to judicially destroy the chosen champion of more than 80 million Americans.
Make no mistake about what is going to happen. It is a historic day in which corruption and the American constitutional system of freedom through the rule of law will collide. In this struggle, only one side will survive.
Former President Donald Trump will be fighting for the constitutional rights of all 333 million Americans.
As Gregg Jarrett wrote, this is a “pernicious attempt to steal an election through abuse of our legal system.” Mr. Jarrett asserted that Mr. Trump is “a victim of unscrupulous political enemies who weaponized the law to destroy him.” Remember, in seeking to destroy Mr. Trump, these corrupt judges and prosecutors are establishing a precedent to destroy any American they choose.
Mr. Jarrett said that “the most curious — and corrupt — aspect of [Manhattan District Attorney Alvin] Bragg’s case is that he still has not identified what underlying crime Trump supposedly committed.” This is a clear violation of the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees the right to know what charges are levied against the accused.
Andy McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, said that “we’re left with the law of the jungle. A two-tiered system of justice system is no justice at all.”
Mr. McCarthy said this prosecution “will threaten the legitimacy of the justice system — on the public acceptance of which the rule of law hinges.”
He warned that this case is “as execrable an exercise of prosecutorial discretion as one can fathom.”
The case being brought against Mr. Trump is pathetically weak. As Kim Strassel of The Wall Street Journal wrote, “what we really do have here is a charge that seems to be in search of a crime.”
Collin Levy asserted that “it makes the country as well as the institutions of the U.S. government just look corrupt and awful. … This is something that’s legally completely dubious and ethically completely horrendous.”
Serious lawyers have expressed contempt for the case against Mr. Trump.
Jeffrey Lichtman said that “this case is a joke.” Randy Zelin of Cornell Law School wrote that “this is a weak case.” Jed Handelsman Shugerman from Fordham and Boston universities said, “The Trump indictment is a legal embarrassment.”
Mr. Shugerman stated that the 34-count indictment “was a disaster. It was a setback for the rule of law and established a dangerous precedent for prosecutors. … Instead of the rule of law, it would be the rule of the circus.”
The constant effort to persecute Mr. Trump using the power of the law and corrupting the process into a political war has educated and then infuriated millions of Americans.
The left’s vicious hostility is so public that Americans have increasingly felt called upon to defend Mr. Trump.
The unfairness and corruption of the left’s system have led to a countervailing popular movement that gains strength with every attack on Mr. Trump. Every act of contempt toward his values and supporters — and every example of the left’s failure to deliver on anything — strengthens this opposition movement.
The elites in Washington and New York cannot understand the millions of people in the rest of the country who put up Trump signs, staff Trump campaign offices, and paint “Make America Great Again” on their cars and trucks. If the choice is MAGA or a corrupt machine of left-wing arrogance and incompetence, the country has been moving steadily away from the failing extremists of the left.
The pattern has made the left even more frenzied and willing to twist and distort the law. Its members are even more ready to pretend legal absurdity is normal and prosecutorial ruthlessness is reasonable.
In a historical parallel — which the left will find absurd but historians will understand immediately — Mr. Trump personifies America as much as Robert the Bruce personified Scotland, or Charles de Gaulle personified France.
This intense bond between champion and movement decisively carried Mr. Trump to the Republican nomination. This bond will strengthen his cause going into the fall campaign. It is in part powered by resentment at the legal corruption that seeks to deprive him of his rights — and those of millions of Americans who want him to be president again.
The only other president to lose office and then win it back after four years is former President Grover Cleveland. In a stunning parallel, Cleveland rose to national fame as a reformer taking on the corrupt Democratic machine in New York City. His supporters said of him, “we love him for the enemies he made.”
At least 80 million Americans love Mr. Trump for the enemies he has made.
The New York case will be a fascinating spectacle over the next few weeks.
• For more commentary by Newt Gingrich, visit Gingrich360.com. Also, subscribe to the Newt’s World podcast.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.