Many things human come in pairs. Eyes, ears, hands, feet, and lungs appear in twos.
Even a single nose features two nostrils. Similar examples should be easy to ponder.
In this context, America’s new, two-track justice system might be perfectly natural: One for the left — in which they suffer few consequences, if any, for their misdeeds — and one for the right, in which arrests, trials, and prison sentences are routine.
After the Supreme Court’s current term ends, masons should spend this summer re-chiseling the marble above its columns. Out with "Equal Justice Under Law."
In with "Bipolar Justice for All!"
Black Lives Matter and ANTIFA thugs on the left spent the summer of 2020 yanking statues from pedestals, torching police precincts, and otherwise unleashing total mayhem. Then-Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., promoted a legal-defense fund to free arrestees.
Few paid any price for the "fiery but mostly peaceful" George Floyd riots.
The Jan. 6 hoodlums on the right who shattered windows and smashed doors to breach the U.S. Capitol deserve serious prison time.
But other protesters naively entered after Capitol Police waved them in.
"Hey, look. It’s open house!" some might have thought.
Many of these accidental tourists are in huge trouble.
Arkansas’ Daniel Hatcher entered the Capitol, snapped some photos for two minutes, and walked out.
The FBI arrested Hatcher in Little Rock last February 13.
He now faces federal charges.
Left-wing Deep State functionaries John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Peter Strzok, and Andrew Weismann, advanced the Russia Hoax, which bedeviled the Trump administration and divided America for three years.
Each of these men scored a book contract and a TV deal. Literally.
On the right, Russiagate ensnared Trump aides Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, George Papadopoulos, General Michael Flynn, and Roger Stone.
All were sentenced to prison. Trump pardoned Flynn and Stone.
Gates served house arrest.
Manafort and Papadopoulos went to the slammer.
On the Left, Democrats Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden both were caught with classified documents that they had no right to possess.
While she was Obama’s secretary of state, Hillary stashed 2,113 classified e-mails on the do-it-yourself server in her mansion in Chappaqua, New York.
After U.S. House Republicans subpoenaed these state secrets, Hillary told her staff to obliterate her server with Bleachbit digital-erasure software.
On Hillary’s orders, cyber-aide Justin Cooper demolished two of her mobile devices with a hammer, as if auditioning for a Martin Scorsese picture.
Despite these blatant violations of the Espionage Act (18 U.S. Code § 793), hindrance of a congressional probe, destruction of evidence, and obstruction of justice, Hillary faced zero charges for any of this in July 2020. Like a star of The Ice Capades, the Dutchess of Chappaqua skated away without consequences, yet again.
For his part, Biden kept boxes of classified documents from his years as senator and vice-president, before he wielded the presidential authority to declassify and possess such records.
Biden held these in a Washington, D.C. office and the garage of his Wilmington, Delaware, mansion — near his little green Corvette. Special Counsel Robert Hur decided on February 5 not to charge Biden with anything.
As Hur’s report concluded, "Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen." Nonetheless, according to Hur, a jury would be unlikely to convict Biden because he would present himself "as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."
So, no consequences here, either.
Meanwhile, Donald J. Trump, a Republican, had the presidential power to declassify and keep secret documents.
The Justice Department let Hillary’s and Biden’s attorneys sift through their records and decide what to surrender to or withhold from the FBI.
In stark contrast, DOJ sicced 30 armed FBI agents on Trump in August 2022.
They raided his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach just before dawn.
They seized 15 boxes of records, searched his son Baron’s bedroom, and even poked through a drawer of former First Lady Melania Trump’s intimate apparel.
Trump now faces federal charges and a future trial at the hands of Get Trump prosecutor Jack Smith.
The quintessence of these two justice systems involves 2016’s presidential nominees and how they separately tried to influence that election.
On the left, Hillary Clinton’s campaign paid $175,000 to Democratic law firm Perkins Coie, which engaged opposition-research shop Fusion GPS.
It hired former British spy Christopher Steele.
He authored a baseless "Dirty Dossier" that hallucinated ties between Trump and the Kremlin. Team Clinton leaked this fraudulent report, which Buzzfeed published.
And the Russia Hoax was off to the races.
On the right, Trump was accused of reimbursing his former attorney, Michael Cohen, for paying porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to clam up about an alleged affair with Trump that both of them have denied.
As former Justice Department official John B. Daukas wrote in the American Spectator: "So, Hillary Clinton is found to be liable for mislabeling payments for the Steele Dossier as legal fees and gets an $8,000 civil fine; Trump has been found guilty of mislabeling non-disclosure payments as legal fees and is a convicted felon."
As Yogi Berra might have said: "Only in America."
Clinton went on to write books, deliver lectures, and whine loudly about why she lost to a real-estate magnate and TV personality on his first political campaign.
Notwithstanding emotional scars, Hillary is out a whopping eight grand.
Trump, meanwhile, endured a six-week trial that kept him off the campaign trail for four days each week, cost him undisclosed millions in — to coin a phrase — legal expenses, and added abundant stress to his already high-pressure life.
He awaits sentencing on July 11 and could receive four years for each of the 34 counts on which he was convicted.
Total: 136 years in the big house.
But is this really so wrong?
If good things come in pairs, perhaps this applies to justice.
Rather than complain about two paths to justice, one left and one right, maybe conservatives should celebrate this development. After all, the truth about sculpted pecs also might apply to justice systems: "One is not enough, and three are too many."
(Editor's Note: The preceding column was updated on June 12, 2024.)
Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor. Read Deroy Murdock's Reports — Read More Here.
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