Could there be a tad of nervousness amongst the liberal establishment, that the scandalous vendetta against Donald Trump might backfire? This is what the Washington Post’s ultraliberal columnist Ruth Marcus suggested in her opinion piece in the Oct. 2 edition of the daily, under the above headline. Given the current efforts to destroy Donald Trump, shut him up and/or jail him, to remove him from the 2024 presidential race, a column coming from someone of Marcus’s pedigree is of some note. She points out that the measures taken against Trump by New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, such as cancelling business licenses for anything owned by him or his sons, is “unusual for any business but particularly dire, if not fatal, in the situation of a real estate empire that can’t physically leave the jurisdiction to operate elsewhere.”
Marcus, of course, insists that Trump is a fraud, who inflated the value of his holdings, and should pay back every penny illegally “earned.” Moreover, she noted, the Judge does have wide discretion to impose “the draconian remedy he did.” Nonetheless, she adds, “the punishment in his case is, as far as I can tell, unprecedented in its scale.” Yes, Trump should be held accountable, but forcing the sale or other disposition of his businesses “seems both unnecessary and unduly punitive, disproportionate to the offenses charged. And I worry that this consequence would not have been meted out to another defendant who engaged in similar misconduct.”
