Senior DOJ spokesman acknowledges cases against Trump are bogus

OPINION:

Democrats may be stepping back from the brink. New York County Judge Juan Merchan — a donor to President Biden — announced last Friday he would hold off on sentencing former President Donald Trump until three weeks after the election. He had previously intended to sentence the former president one week from now.

Judge Merchan and Judge Arthur Engoron likely are feeling increased scrutiny of their consistently hostile election season rulings in New York. The GOP nominee highlighted this in a news conference Friday.

“It’s very corrupt in New York. It’s doing very badly,” Mr. Trump said. “Today there’s a story of someone in the SDNY [Southern District of New York] who is highly respected, knocking the hell out of both of those cases. … Experts say this case should not have been brought. The Judge Merchan case, it’s a disgrace.”

Mr. Trump was referring to Nicholas Biase, the chief Department of Justice spokesman in New York’s Southern District, who described the various local prosecutions involving Mr. Trump as a “perversion of justice” and “mockery of justice.” He was speaking loosely with a woman in a bar who covertly recorded their conversation for use on the “Louder With Crowder” program that airs on Rumble.

Referring to the case before Judge Engoron, Mr. Biase said that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was “stacking charges and rearranging things just to make it fit a case. To be honest with you, I think the case is nonsense. Every real estate person in New York does what [Mr. Trump] did. Nobody’s ever been charged with this.”

Mr. Biase has worked with Mr. Bragg for a decade and says he knows him really well. He’s no fan of Mr. Trump, but he acknowledges that his colleagues tend to share his view of the litigation against the former president. According to a statement released Thursday, Mr. Biase apologized to the state and local prosecutors he disparaged.

“I should have known better,” he said.

For instance, referring to Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis and her indictment of Mr. Trump, the spokesman had said: “The whole thing is disgusting, and they’re just out to get him.”

Fortunately, the case filed by Ms. Willis was derailed by her public misconduct, and her “get Trump” effort won’t affect the November election.

The same can’t be said for social media. Despite Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s pledge to refrain from siding with Democrats this election campaign, his minions initially blocked and then throttled videos featuring the Justice Department spokesman, reducing the number of people who would be exposed to this insider’s unfiltered assessment.

The public wouldn’t like it if they knew what was really happening behind the scenes of organizations that are supposed to be upholding the law. Of most concern, Matthew Colangelo, formerly the third-highest ranking Justice Department official in the Biden-Harris administration, had been dispatched to the local prosecutors’ offices to coordinate the get Trump project for the White House.

That project is only temporarily paused. Should Vice President Kamala Harris prevail in November, Judge Merchan will almost certainly feel free to impose a prison sentence on a former president on those “nonsense” charges.

Even the Supreme Court may not be able to prevent our slide into full-blown banana republic status. It would take only Democratic victories in a handful of House races to give Ms. Harris the votes she needs to implement her court-packing plan.

That’s what’s at stake on Nov. 5.