Opinion

Courts must end special treatment for criminal Trump


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A New York appeals court reduced Donald Trump’s bond payment from $464 million to $175 million on Mar. 25. The reduction came after Trump had already been allowed significant delays in numerous court cases. The former president faces a total of 91 felony criminal charges and could theoretically face a prison sentence of over seven centuries if convicted on all counts.

Straight Arrow News contributor David Pakman says this latest olive branch is just another example of how Trump unfairly benefits from the two-tiered justice system in the United States. Pakman argues that if Trump were any ordinary citizen, he’d have already been imprisoned and would now be awaiting his trials from behind bars.

Trump has benefited from the two-tier justice system in multiple ways. First of all, most defendants, me, you, most of you–depending on who’s listening, right–we would not be out on bond if we had four different serious criminal trials in four different jurisdictions with 91 felony counts against us and access to a private plane. We would be rightly deemed flight risks. And we would probably be held without bond awaiting trial in jail. Trump got the benefit of the two-tier justice system and doesn’t have that [sic] what’s going on.

Secondly, Donald Trump got the benefit of violating gag order after gag order after gag order in multiple courts from multiple judges where he was told, ‘Don’t speak publicly about the staff of the court, don’t speak publicly about the prosecutors, don’t try to indirectly speak to the witnesses and [sic] send the messages through public social media posts.’ And Trump violated gag order after gag order with no serious penalty whatsoever. If I were to do that the number of times Trump did it, if you were to do it, we would probably have our bond revoked and we would be extensively fined. So it is yet another way in which Donald Trump has benefited from the two-tier justice system.