Pundits and historians will be a long time sorting out the magnitude
of Donald Trump’s electoral victory but one thing already is clear:
Trump not only triumphed in the presidential contest, he also won the
lawfare war.
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Pundits and historians will be a long time sorting out the magnitude
of Donald Trump’s electoral victory but one thing already is clear:
Trump not only triumphed in the presidential contest, he also won the
lawfare war.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: 202-646-5188
December 28, 2024
-------------------------

TRUMP WINS LAWFARE WAR

Pundits and historians will be a long time sorting out the magnitude
of Donald Trump’s electoral victory but one thing already is clear:
Trump not only triumphed in the presidential contest, he also won the
lawfare war. The latter—a victory for the constitutional foundation
of the country —may prove as consequential as the former.

“Lawfare” is a political war fought by other means: partisan
warfare conducted in the courts and the media. Trump spent the entire
Biden presidency battling lawfare cases brought by Democrat-allied
prosecutors and judges—by Justice Department Special Counsel Jack
Smith, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Georgia District
Attorney Fani Willis, New York State Attorney General Letitia James,
New York judges Juan Merchan and Arthur Engoron, and others.

Trump fought back in the courts and in the court of public opinion.
His election win not only deals death blows to the Democrat-aligned
lawfare cases, but possibly to the practice of lawfare itself. Let’s
take a moment to survey the legal landscape:

_JACK SMITH GOES DOWN_

In November 2022, President Joe Biden’s attorney general, Merrick
Garland, appointed prosecutor Jack Smith as special counsel for two
Justice Department investigations: the January 6, 2021, events at the
U.S. Capitol, and separately, alleged Trump mishandling of classified
documents. It was a particularly brazen lawfare move because by that
time, the outline of the 2024 presidential contest was clear: Donald
Trump was the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination and Joe
Biden was signaling that he would run for re-election. The Biden
Justice Department investigating the GOP presidential candidate
seemed an outlandish and illegal proposition
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but Garland and Smith pressed on. In July, Judge Aileen Cannon had
seen enough and dismissed
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the
classified documents case on the grounds that the special counsel was
unlawfully appointed. In November, after the election, the Justice
Department threw in the towel, moving to drop all January 6 charges
against Trump on the grounds that a sitting president cannot be
charged with a crime. Trump rightfully claimed victory. “I
persevered, against all odds, and WON,” he wrote on Truth Social. He
added, “These cases, like all of the other cases I have been forced
to go through, are empty and lawless, and should never have been
brought,”

_BRAGG’S NEW YORK CRIMINAL CASE IN DEATH SPIRAL__ _

Deep blue New York produced a cadre of lawfare warriors in pursuit of
the once and future Republican president. One of its chief combatants
was Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg
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who campaigned
for office on an anti-Trump platform, reminding voters that he had
“sued Trump more than a hundred times.” Before charging Trump in
April 2023 with thirty-four felony counts of falsifying business
records—generally a low-level misdemeanor—Bragg had led a civil
lawsuit against the Trump Foundation and criminal cases against the
Trump Organization and its chief financial officer. Trump was
convicted in May on the business records charges, but his lawyers are
asking that the case be thrown out on numerous grounds, including that
any sentencing would unconstitutionally interfere with Trump’s
conduct of a second term in the presidency. Bragg recently petitioned
the court to put the case on ice for the entirety of Trump’s second
president term—a move the Trump team ridiculed as “a total failure
of the prosecution” signaling that the case is “effectively over
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_LAWFARE JUDGES UNDER PRESSURE_

Presiding over the flurry of appeals
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in
the business-records case is Justice Juan Merchan, another New Yorker
with a lawfare pedigree. Earlier this month, Merchan threw out
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Trump’s
appeal to dismiss the case on the basis of presidential immunity. Like
most New York judges, Merchan rose through the ranks of the Democratic
Party’s political machine, which plays a significant role in state
judicial appointments. Before becoming a judge, Merchan served as a
prosecutor in the Manhattan DA’s office and worked for the New York
attorney general. In 2006, Mayor Michael Bloomberg appointed him to a
family court judgeship, and he was elevated to criminal court in 2009.
In July, Merchan received a “caution letter
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from the New
York Commission of Judicial Conduct warning him about donations to Joe
Biden and other Democratic causes. Merchan’s daughter, Loren, is
president of the left-wing digital advertising firm, Authentic
Campaigns. Juan Merchan will have plenty of power over the Trump
appeals in the coming months, but he will not have the final word.
Trump can appeal to higher New York courts and, ultimately, the U.S.
Supreme Court.

Trump also faced a high-stakes legal assault from New York State
Attorney General Letitia James in a civil fraud case presided over by
Justice Arthur Engoron. James and Engoron both came up through the
progressive ranks of the New York Democratic Party. Like Alvin Bragg,
James used Trump as a punching bag in her campaign for political
office. She denounced Trump
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as
an “illegitimate president” and vowed to “shine a bright light
into every corner of his real estate dealings.” Engoron, a longtime
Democrat, protested the Vietnam War at Columbia University and has
been a member of the ACLU for three decades. Engoron presided over a
non-jury civil fraud trial related to real-estate valuations by the
Trump Organization and stunned legal observers on both sides of the
political aisle in February with a guilty verdict
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ordering
Trump to pay a staggering $335 million penalty—plus rapidly growing
interest and additional fines. Trump immediately vowed an appeal and
at a September hearing, New York appellate judges signaled skepticism
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about
the Engoron ruling.

_ __THE GEORGIA CASE COLLAPSES_

Meanwhile, in Georgia, Fulton County DA Fani Willis’s case against
Trump for allegedly conspiring to change the outcome of the 2020
election has collapsed. A state appeals court removed Willis and her
entire office
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from
the Trump prosecution over a conflict of interest involving a romantic
relationship between Willis and another member of her team. The
Georgia Court of Appeals panel said the “appearance of
impropriety” was so powerful that “this is the rare case in which
disqualification is mandated and no other remedy will suffice to
restore public confidence in the integrity of these
proceedings.” Willis, a longtime Democrat, can appeal to the
Georgia Supreme Court, but the legal tides are running against her.
Trump’s Georgia lawyer issued a statement saying that the decision
“puts an end to a politically motivated persecution of the next
President of the United States.”

Judicial Watch has been investigating the lawfare against Trump for
years. Our own Tom Fitton was dragged into a Jack Smith grand jury
for, as he noted on X
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“four hours of
harassing questions about First Amendment-protected activity and
debates about electors, tweets, what I ate for lunch at the White
House, and whether I watched Trump’s election night speech. It was
all about politics.”

At Judicial Watch, we continue to closely track lawfare developments,
push for more accountability, and report to the public. Among our
recent moves, we’re seeking a special master
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in
our lawsuit for Fani Willis’s communication with lawfare warriors
Jack Smith and the House January 6 Committee; earlier this month,
Willis admitted communicating with the January 6 Committee, but
released only a one already public letter. In February,
we protested
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a
Biden Administration move to keep secret the names of top Jack Smith
staff. In 2023, we sued
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the
Justice Department for records of funding and assistance between
Smith’s office and Willis’s office, and we obtained information
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showing
Manhattan DA Bragg hiring high-priced lawyers to beat back
Congressional inquiries into his Trump prosecutions.

There’s more to come. Stay tuned.

###

Micah Morrison is chief investigative reporter for Judicial Watch.




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