There’s long been a story line in fiction about a character so obsessed with something – be it a person, object or idea – that they end up being destroyed by it. Melville’s Moby Dick is perhaps the best-known but there are many others, Gollum from The Lord Of The Rings is a modern classic.

So it is with the US Democrat Party and their blinding hatred of President Trump. I put the cartoon in because it was a foretelling of what would happen to the US MSM with sharply falling ratings when Trump finally left office, and it’s also an indication of what might happen to the Democrats – or more precisely to the institutions of US government that they claim to support by using them to get Trump.

Instead they appear to be destroying those institutions in their insane quest, and all the gaslighting in the world is not going to bring back public trust. The fact that Trump’s polls have steadily risen since the first of the 91 indictments was filed against him and that he now leads Biden across a range of national and swing state polls and issue polls, is one indication. Such charges were supposed to sink him and no, unlike 2016, the Democrats were not trying to make him the GOP nominee; they did at least learn from that debacle – although not enough to boot Biden as a candidate this year.

The latest piece of collateral damage arises from the decision of New York Supreme Court Judge Engoron to fine Trump $355 million for being found guilty of an extremely obscure fraud law that has never been used before. That last according to, of all people, the Associated Press, who searched through 150 fraud cases over 70 years and found no other where these rules had been applied.

What. A. Surprise.

I hadn’t followed this Trump case too closely (there are four others ongoing) because it didn’t seem as serious to me as the two cases that Special Counsel Jack “Crazy Killer Eyes” Smith is pursuing around the events of January 6, 2021 (including Trump’s “fraudulent” belief that won) and Trump’s mis-handling of classified information. In theory those could lead to jail time. Still, an amount of money as large as this would be a serious dent in Trump’s fortunes and it could cripple him on the campaign trail. It will be appealed of course, all the way to the Supreme Court. and given the thinness of these unique charges combined with the ludicrous size of the punishment I’d expect one or both to be rejected by SCOTUS.

The problem is that now the cat is out of the bag regarding property developers in New York City, and NY Governor Hochul is well aware of this as she put out a rather desperate plea to them, which, given the rate that entrepreneurs and rich people are already fleeing the city and state, is not surprising:

“I think that this is really an extraordinary, unusual circumstance that the law-abiding and rule-following New Yorkers who are business people have nothing to worry about, because they’re very different than Donald Trump and his behavior,” Hochul responded.

Haha. I wish her and her party no luck with that gaslighting. Given that every property developer in the nation has operated the same way forever, and given that there were no actual fraud victims (the supposedly defrauded bank actually testified in Trump’s defence, given that Trump repaid their loans with the agreed interest), everybody knows that this is entirely political. As usual, law professor, Ann Althouse has a sharp take on that statement:

What is the “extraordinary, unusual circumstance”?  Being Donald Trump? If so, she’s revealing that she believes the prosecutors went after the man, not the crime, an abhorrent abuse of power. So, whatever she thinks, she can’t mean to be saying that. What else is there?

There’s the classic unbelievable assurance that if you don’t break the law, you’ve got nothing to worry about. If you’re “law-abiding and rule-following,” then you’re not in the category with Donald Trump.  Trump did something “extraordinary” and “unusual.” Or did the prosecution do something “extraordinary” and “unusual”?

It’s not reassuring.

No it’s not, but Ms Althouse is displaying an alarming degree of faith in the system by expressing such surprise. Perhaps this is the difference between being a law professor and a lawyer, although I’d have thought would have sufficient grasp on US legal history to be more suspicious of the system.

Law professor Turley went into more detail here:

Yet the court admitted that not a single dollar was lost by the banks from these dealings. Indeed, witnesses testified that they wanted to do more business with Trump, who was described as a “whale” client with high yield business opportunities.

Undervaluing and overvaluing property is a longstanding practice in New York real estate. The forms submitted by the Trump organization cautioned the banks to do their own estimates and the loans were paid in full and on time. Yet, the New York law used by James is a curiosity because it does not actually require a victim. Indeed, everyone can make ample profits and still allow for an investigation into “repeated fraudulent or illegal acts.”

As such I think she’d have been better off making the following statement:

I just want to assure all businesses in New York that as long as you stay loyal to the Democrat Party, or at least don’t oppose us, you and your businesses will be perfectly safe from our elected prosecutors and judges.

Because that would be believable.