Having met Donald Trump on a couple of social occasions several years ago and found him to be very gracious and likable, plus gratefully agreeing with virtually all of his presidential domestic and global policies, I have nevertheless kept an open mind regarding my final 2024 GOP primary pick – until now.
Those previous uncertainties preceded subsequent exposure of a terrifyingly politicized and weaponized “justice system” and complicit legacy media that has relentlessly attacked Trump – and foundational American values – from the time he first announced his 2016 candidacy.
It began with the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation of the Trump campaign which continued into his presidency based upon fictitious Russia collusion charges cooked up by Hillary Clinton as a distraction from her illegal destruction of more than 30,000 email messages on her private server and cell phones using bleach bit and hammers which were under congressional subpoena.
Some contained classified national security-sensitive materials obtained during her tenure as U.S. secretary of state.
As later clarified in the 308-page Durham Report, "At the time of the opening of Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI did not possess any intelligence showing that anyone associated with the Trump campaign was in contact with Russian intelligence officers at any point during the campaign."
Durham also noted lead FBI Crossfire Hurricane investigator Peter Strzok's texting with colleague and lead attorney Lisa Page repeatedly expressing shared loathing of Trump and desires to derail his presidential campaign.
That scheme was staged with broad Obama administration and intelligence agency knowledge. Former CIA Director John Brennan had briefed President Barack Obama and other senior national security officials including Vice President Joe Biden, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and FBI Director James Comey regarding the "Clinton plan" on Aug. 31, 2016.
Nearly two years and $32 million later, Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller and his expansive team of investigators found no more evidence of any collusion than when they started.
Undeterred, Trump’s enemies impeached him for asking incoming Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to look into former VP Biden’s suspicious ties to the corrupt business practices of Burisma, an energy company that was paying son Hunter $1 million a year as a board member.
This inquiry was obviously a legitimate national security matter given Biden's braggadocio about withholding $1 billion in U.S. military aid unless Ukraine fired its lead prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who at the time was investigating Burisma. The Senate acquitted.
We have since learned that an FBI source told U.S. officials of a conversation in which the head of Burisma disclosed that he had paid Joe and Hunter Biden $5 million each for unknown services.
The FBI sat on demons lurking in Hunter’s “laptop from Hell” for nearly a year throughout the 2020 election, and even advised media companies to dismiss any upcoming rumors of Biden family scandals as Russian disinformation. Fifty-one intel officials joined that choir in falsely dismissing a bombshell New York Post article on the contents as bogus.
Then came impeachment No. 2, in which Trump again was acquitted, and then a months-long Democrat kangaroo court hearings, that accused Trump of inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Those hearings included only two Republicans, both of which were adamantly anti-Trump, allowed no meaningful cross examination and entirely omitted his statement: "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."
Nor is there any explanation why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused his offer of providing thousands of National Guard personnel to safeguard the Capitol on that day.
All of this has been followed by endless legal assaults clearly intended to make him ineligible for reelection, or failing that, financially bleed his campaign coffers dry while deflecting attention away from the Biden family corruption accusations.
The 45th president – who received 63 million votes in 2016 and even more, 74 million, in his 2020 loss, has since been indicted four times, twice by federal grand juries and once each in the bright blue jurisdictions of Manhattan and Fulton County (i.e. Atlanta), Georgia.
An armed early morning August 2019 FBI raid on his private Mar-a-Lago residence for documents Trump was authorized to declassify somehow served as an indictment pretense, whereas those discovered at multiple Biden properties including his unsecure garage with no such legal privilege are somehow no big deal.
A second federal indictment charging Trump with attempting to overturn the 2020 election by challenging its results, apparently ignored Al Gore’s demand for a Florida recount of “hanging chads” in 2000 and Hillary Clinton’s claim in 2016 that she should have legitimately won if not for that infamous Russia collusion canard.
Trump’s Manhattan indictment for paying Stormy Daniels to bury reports of an alleged sexual encounter got lots of juicy press coverage – not so much for the 1993 sexual accusations by former Senate staffer Tara Reade against former Delaware Sen. Joe Biden alleging that he sexually assaulted her in the U.S. Capitol building. Or records showing that son Hunter attempted to deduct membership in an L.A. sex club as a “business expense.”
Now, in a desperate attempt to get that elusive Trump mug shot to plaster on the front page of every global newspaper, another felony Trump indictment under mob RICO charges for attempting to interfere with Georgia’s 2020 election vote counts. This is in a state where Stacey Abrams challenged her “stolen election” for governor based upon “discriminatory” requirements that voters verify their true identities.
So perhaps it’s understandable if Trump is somewhat miffed over what he regards to be unfair treatment deserving of retribution.
And just maybe lots of the rest of us will give that long overdue payback a very big boost in November 2024 ballot boxes.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.
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