How Trump's Sham Conviction Awakened a Sleeping Giant

(Editor's Note: The following opinion column does not constitute an endorsement of any political party or candidate on the part of Newsmax.)

Before gloating prematurely regarding a sham Manhattan court verdict finally branding their leading presidential campaign rival Donald Trump as a "convicted felon," strategists for the Biden administration, and their aligned army of lawfare prosecutors, should heed sobering diary reflections of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto who planned Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor: "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."

Very apparently it hasn’t taken long for that loud U.S. injustice wakeup call to register with results. Within two days of the verdict, Trump’s 2024 campaign coffers added more than $200 million, including over $70 million from small donors.

The former president's fundraising website even crashed at one point.

And while some previous polls have indicated that a small percentage of GOP voters could think differently about supporting Trump if he is convicted, a NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll released last Thursday found 67% of voters said a guilty verdict would make no difference to their vote, while 16% said it would make it more likely, and 17% said it would make them less likely to vote for Trump.

Why call it a sham trial?

Because that’s what many millions of Americans including legal scholars recognize it to be, and for lots of sound reasons.

For starters, as described by well-known George Washington Law School Professor Jonathan Turley, "The trial itself was a travesty" which "even liberal legal analysts and figures have admitted that the case against Trump was unprecedented and would not have been brought against anyone other than Trump."

Turley expresses concern over the appointment rather than normal random selection process of seating presiding Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan, a Biden donor whose daughter is currently a major Democratic fund raiser, in a case drawing upon a jury selected in a district that voted roughly 90% against Trump.

Adding to ugly optics, Turley notes that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg used help in building the case from Matthew Colangelo, a former Democratic National Committee paid political consultant who for curious reasons left his lofty position as third-highest official in the Biden Justice Department to act as his lead prosecutor.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, criminal defense and civil liberties attorney Harvey Silvergate observes that AG Bragg will emerge as one of the most infamous practitioners of "creative prosecutions" in recent legal history for having used a convoluted legal theory to turn a misdemeanor into a felony in ways that create precedents that will plague the nation for decades.

Prof. Turley similarly recalls that after sitting in the courtroom watching a trial that found Trump guilty of 34 questioned bookkeeping charges "built on a dead misdemeanor barred with the passage of the statute of limitations," he still has no idea what actual crime he was convicted of.

Nor, apparently, did the jury.

Merchan’s instructions allowed them to base their verdict on any one of three vaguely defined crimes of a federal election violation (which would make it a legal federal — not state — court matter), falsification of business records, or taxation violations.

Further, he made no requirement that they agree amongst themselves which of these they determined were unlawful.

Thus, Turley observes, "the jury could have divided 4-4-4 on what actually occurred but the verdict was still treated as unanimous by Merchan to convict Trump."

Judge Merchan was no friend to the former president and leader of the free world under his jurisdictional authority.

In addition to refusing to recuse himself over obvious conflicts of interest, he allowed irrelevant salacious testimony by a porn actress and unsupported accusations of repeatedly convicted perjurer Michael Cohen while disallowing Trump defense attorneys from calling former FEC Commissioner Bradley Smith as a top expert witness.

Smith would have explained that no real crime had either been accused or committed.

Then, while holding the nation’s lead presidential candidate hostage and off the campaign trail in his courtroom during a national election campaign season, he has imposed gag orders under penalty if incarceration for speaking out in his own defense and scheduled his sentencing to occur just four days before the GOP convention.

Johnathan Turley emphasizes that political prosecutions of the type we have been witnessing with lawfare against Donald Trump are something most citizens associate with dictatorships.

Whereas the response to this "thrill-kill conviction" by many in the media has bordered on indecent, for numerous others outside of Manhattan, the politicization of America’s legal system is viewed as repulsive and chilling.

Sometimes, Turley concludes, "it takes a great abuse to shock the public into recognizing the need to act."

Let Admiral Yamamoto’s Dec. 7, 1941, prediction that America would awaken if sufficiently provoked be a lesson for us now.

Perhaps note that the battle of Midway which occurred seven months later, on June 7, 1942, is often considered the turning point of the War in the Pacific.

By comparison, the November elections will take place pretty much on schedule as another historic turning point for America.

Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.