Can Trump Stay Out Of Jail - Wealth Week Episode 34
There are at least three reasons why I thank my lucky stars I don’t live in America. First, the politics. It’s clear that the country is not being run by the senile Joe Biden or the featherweight Kamala Harris, so problem number one is identifying exactly who IS running America? The second reason is the American healthcare system which is ruinously expensive and has led to Americans being the most medicated society on earth. It’s not doing them any favours as their life expectancy is falling faster than other developed nations. But it’s the third reason that’s the clincher. I’m talking about the biggest oxymoron of all, the American justice system. It has a conviction rate that makes the regimes in North Korea and Iran seem liberal.
Last year, there were 71,954 defendants in federal criminal cases. How many of those cases came to trial? Just 2.3%, or 1,669 cases. And how many of those defendants that went to trial were acquitted? Just 0.4%, a mere 290 people. Maths was never my strong suit, but I make that a conviction rate of 99.6%. How do you fancy those odds? That’s a slight exaggeration, because 8.2% of defendants had their case dismissed at some point in the judicial process, according to the data from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. That still means that around 90% of defendants plead guilty to something rather than risk the expense and almost certain risk of defeat if they insist on a trial.
Elsewhere in our culture, for example on social media, we’ve seen the inversion of natural justice and its quaintly old-fashioned assumption that you are innocent until proven guilty. As Cliff Richard and Paul Gambaccini will tell you, all it takes is the accusation. No evidence is needed. The police do not need to step out of their rainbow wrapped squad cars, and it doesn’t need to go near a court of law. Once accused, you are declared guilty, cancelled and airbrushed from history. I’d often wondered where this denial of the most basic of human rights could have begun. It’s clear that it originates from the US justice system, where once you are charged with a felony or misdemeanour, there is no Get Out Of Jail Free card, no prospect of a fair trial and no going back to your former life.
All that lies ahead of you is a sordid back room deal called a Plea Bargain where you plead guilty to one of the ridiculously long string of charges they’ve cooked up in return for a lesser sentence. You may even manage to avoid the stripey jump suit if your lawyer is a good negotiator. But the criminal record will stick with you forever. Federal prosecutors have unlimited funds available to investigate crimes. This is one reason many legal analysts suspect that the conviction rate at the federal level is so high. It may also be why there’s been a 60% decline in the number of cases proceeding to trial during the past two decades.
So what types of crime are we talking about here? 80% of it fits into four categories – perhaps not surprisingly, 31% are drug related crimes, 25% are concerned with illegal immigration, 16% to do with firearms and 11% are connected with property. All fairly predictable given what we know about America, its opioid addiction, its porous Southern border and its love of gun ownership. But this year this broken system has plumbed new depths with its political weaponization against former President Donald Trump. Joe Biden has joined an illustrious group of world leaders who have moved heaven and earth to imprison their main political opponents. Chairman Mao, Kim Jong Un, Idi Amin, Joseph Stalin among other leading democrats through the ages. Whatever your politics, whatever you think of Trump, surely the double standards evident in the US justice system give you cause for concern?
There is mounting evidence that Hunter Biden was paid millions from sources in Ukraine and China, and that the evidence from his laptop was suppressed ahead of the 2020 election just as the now disproved Russian links to Trump were being given maximum exposure in the compliant media. We now know that the Big Man, aka Joe Biden, took part in at least 20 phone calls with Hunter’s business contacts. I am sure we all believe him when he says he only talked about the weather. You know what? That’s probably true. All Hunter had to prove was that he had access to the (then) Vice President which meant that he could deliver on any promises or threats that were linked to those multi-million payments. Strong evidence of corruption and a threat to national security going all the way to the White House, and the outcome is a sweetheart deal to slap Hunter on the wrist and keep him out of jail. Not even a sniff of an enquiry into the Big Man whose net worth seems to have increased many fold in the last decade or so. Nothing to see here!