Chris Christie, the Republican Convention, and the Blatant Disregard of Due Process
Most of the speakers at the Republican convention and the delegates have seriously violated the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments guaranteeing due process of law. They are demanding jail and in some cases trial for their Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton on charges about her email server or Benghazi, ignoring that she has already been cleared of such charges.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, has been involved in over 3,000 court cases. The fraud suit against him on Trump University has, fortunately for him, been delayed until after the election, by a judge that Trump has called biased due to his parents country of origin, Mexico. Trump has been accused of refusing to pay contractors, of fleecing investors in now defunct housing projects, and in his many bankrupt hotels. I hesitate to think of how many cases he has argued in tax court, since none of his tax records in the last 18 years has been released.
Chris Christie, Governor of New Jersey since 2010, was former U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey from 2002 through 2008. He was appointed by President George W. Bush, back in the day when the Senate was still fulfilling its Constitutional role to appoint judges. Christie has his J.D. From the distinguished Seton Hall University School of Law. As a lawyer, an attorney general, and a governor, he well knows that you do not violate due process by indicting a person in public, especially on charges that have already been dismissed, and especially not to further your future candidacy for the presidency at a political convention. Yet in his ambition, he carried out such a witch trial against the opposing Democratic candidate.
This kind of purging and arresting of political opponents is decried when dictators around the world do it. It occurs under Putin, except by murder, is occurring in Egypt, and is currently being done in an enormous scale in Turkey.
Several circumstances compound his violation of due process. The most blatant is that following his rejection as Trump’s Vice President, he is being mentioned as a possible appointee as Attorney General in Trump’s cabinet. Does he really think that the Democratic Senators who must consent won’t remember this speech?
The next factor is Bridgegate. While Christie has not been implicated or charged in this, his career has been effectively terminated by unfair questions of his involvement or future charges. This made him an unlikely choice in the primaries. It may have weighed against his being chosen as Trump’s VP. Christie now knows full well what happens when you are unfairly denied the protection of due process and of being innocent until proven guilty.
Most of the speakers, and many of the delegate chants in the Republican convention, are ignoring the protection of the due process clauses. Of course, this is hypocrisy by the Republicans who love to tout that they are the party which will uphold the Constitution.
The anti-Hillary emphasis of the convention is also their main campaign focus, in order to ignore the widespread dislike of Trump and his policies. Almost nobody is touting the few policies of Trump that we know about, because they are so unpopular. Policies to Make America Safe Again and for Jobs are not known in detail, and change weekly anyway.
