Trump is the 'product of a rigged system that only he can unrig': LA Times editorial board

16 June 2024

When President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, was convicted on all three of his gun-related charges by a Delaware jury last week, many legal experts insisted that former president Donald Trump's claims of persecution were shattered as a result.

CNN Politics senior reporter Stephen Collinson wrote Wednesday, "Throughout his trial in Manhattan, his former hometown, Trump, insisted he couldn’t get a fair verdict in a city that votes mostly Democratic. But Delaware is a blue state — and a jury there just convicted the president’s son."

In a Sunday, June 16 editorial, the LA Times Editorial Board turns the table on Trumpworld's narrative that the justice system has been politically rigged against him.

The editors write, "Although any competent justice system does its best to mete out criminal punishment or exoneration free from political trends, popularity or personal interest, politics is intimately involved in shaping the criminal justice system."

Which is why, the board continues, Americans must "defend against attempts by Trump and others to inject more politics into the system, by calling convicted and imprisoned offenders 'hostages,' dangling pardons for his supporters, insisting on immunity for presidential acts (by him, of course, not by Biden) and framing any ruling against him as the product of a rigged system that only he can unrig."

The Times writes:

Trump’s claim of a 'two-tiered' justice system is laughable only because of his absurd implication that as a coddled, rich and privileged man he’s in the bottom of those tiers. In fact, our system still separates criminal defendants by wealth, setting free those (like Trump) who can bail out and locking up those who can’t.

Despite laws prohibiting racial discrimination, prosecutors still block jurors by race, religion or other attributes to gain a strategic edge. The Supreme Court still operates without any serious check on individual members’ ethical lapses. The justice system still is more likely to ensnare a Black defendant than a white one for the same offense and more likely to convict and more severely punish the Black ones.

"Politics necessarily has a role in the justice system," the editors emphasize, "but the American system is countered and contained by a complex of essential procedures and rituals. We have detailed rules for juries — summonses, voir dire, instructions, deliberations — and rules of evidence, witness testimony, public and press observers, appeals, pardons."

"Witnesses place their hands on the Bible and swear to tell the truth. Still, courts are human institutions run by flawed human beings who have only each other, and the law, to keep them as honest and fair as possible."

Read the LA Times' full editorial here.

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