President Joe Biden has weaponized the Department of Justice, according to long-standing allegations by former president Donald Trump. He also claims that Republicans are treated differently than Democrats.
Lately, there has been a lot of evidence to the contrary.
Just across the street from where Trump’s New York state trial involving hush money payments is proceeding in Manhattan is the second trial for bribery in seven years involving Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, who is seeking reelection. The claims that Menendez and his wife took envelopes containing cash, gold bars, and other valuables are all denied by him.
The Democratic representative from Texas, Henry Cuellar, is facing corruption accusations filed by federal prosecutors. He is accused of accepting about $600,000 in bribes, some of which came from an international oil and gas firm. The accusations are denied by Cuellar.
An AWN article from January stated that Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri, who is also a Democrat, is being investigated by the federal government over her expenditures on campaigns. She stands by her decision to pay her spouse for security guard services and has denied any wrongdoing.
Rebuttal to the claim of political bias
If nothing else, the aforementioned incidents add significant complexity to Trump’s frequently-repeated assertion that he is the object of a political “witch hunt.”
Additionally, the president’s son Hunter Biden is facing prosecution in two different cases: one involving taxes in California and another involving a gun in Delaware. These charges are rarely prosecuted alone. June is the scheduled start date for both trials.
The former president is facing two separate charges brought against him by special counsel Jack Smith: one for trying to reverse the 2020 election and another for refusing to surrender sensitive materials to the National Archives after leaving the White House. At this time, both of those charges are not being pursued. Notably, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg subsequently filed charges against Trump related to the hush money payments scheme, but federal prosecutors decided not to press those charges.
During his speech on Capitol Hill last September, an unusually combative Attorney General Merrick Garland denied any accusation of prejudice.
He made it clear that they should not prioritize “politically convenient” actions. “We are not here to follow directives regarding who or what to investigate criminally from the president, Congress, or anybody else.”
In addition to the menendez trial’s commencement, the Bush probe, and the Cuellar indictment are recent additions to the ongoing list of federal cases that I began compiling last year.
A list of current and past federal cases involving governors and politicians is presented below. I don’t claim this is a complete list, but it is all the information I was able to get from AWN and other news sources beginning in the year 2000.
Currently pending federal lawsuits involving federal politicians
Two are against Democrats, Menendez and Cuellar, and one is against a Republican, the outgoing New York Representative George Santos. As of this writing, Bush has not been charged.
Another thing to note is that there was no prosecution. The Florida Republican Matt Gaetz was advised last year by the Department of Justice that he would not face charges in a protracted investigation into sex trafficking.
What is omitted from this
Since they were not handled by the Department of Justice, local prosecutions such as those involving former Florida Republican Rep. Trey Radel for cocaine possession in the nation’s capital or former Idaho Republican Sen. Larry Craig for lewd behavior at the Minneapolis airport do not really belong here.
Among the famous state-level Democrats targeted by the DOJ in recent cases is Andrew Gillum, a Democrat and former mayor of Tallahassee, Florida, who was unsuccessful in his 2018 bid for governor against Republican Ron DeSantis. Defying the FBI, Gillum was found not guilty.
After pleading guilty to charges relating to a scam in which local charitable organizations purchased her self-published children’s book, Democrat Catherine Pugh, who was previously mayor of Baltimore, received a sentence of three years in jail.
Trump faces accusations
A conspiracy “witch hunt” orchestrated by the deep state is something that Trump enjoys claiming.
While he is facing charges for handling secret material, he frequently asks why Hillary Clinton was not held accountable for her email server.
This ignores the events surrounding Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, in which she claimed Comey’s handling of the FBI investigation into her emails was the reason she lost. Comey criticized Clinton but did not press charges against her until eleven days before the election, when he announced that the investigation had been reopened.
No one will listen to these what-aboutisms for very long.