Trump: Biden ‘Jailing Political Opponents Just Like the Soviet Union and Now Russia’ - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Trump: Biden ‘Jailing Political Opponents Just Like the Soviet Union and Now Russia’
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The other day in this space, I headlined this:

New York Attorney General Letitia James Must Resign — and Be Prosecuted for Abuse of Power

Her anti-Trump lawsuit is a staggering criminalization of politics.

Make no mistake. Letitia James is no stand-alone. She is merely one more example of a seriously dangerous trend from Democrats: using law enforcement to persecute and prosecute their political opponents.

The other night at his rally in Michigan, former President Donald Trump took on the serious danger that is President Joe Biden and New York Attorney General Letitia James and their corruption of the FBI and the New York state attorney general’s office.

But first, here’s a spate of recent headlines that illustrate the serious and decidedly dangerous problem posed by Biden and James.

The Daily Wire:

FBI Team Conducts Early-Morning Raid, Arrests Pro-Life Activist At Pennsylvania Home: Report

Here’s a quote citing Ryan-Marie Houck, the wife of arrested-at-dawn pro-lifer Mark Houck, with the latter the target:

Ryan-Marie Houck told the outlet that the group of agents in SWAT gear arrived in 15 vehicles outside the family home at around 7:05 a.m. Friday morning. The agents quickly surrounded the house and began pounding on the door, demanding they open up. Houck reportedly tried to get the agents to calm down, noting that his seven children were scared, but the agents kept shouting. “[T]hey had big, huge rifles pointed at Mark and pointed at me and kind of pointed throughout the house,” his wife said.

Houck and his wife asked the agents why they were there, to which the agents allegedly replied that they were there to arrest him. His wife asked for a warrant, but “they said that they were going to take him whether they had a warrant or not,” Ryan-Marie Houck recalled.

Then there was this from National Review on my own Republican Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry:

FBI Seizes Representative Scott Perry’s Personal Cellphone a Day after Trump Raid: Report

The story said:

Representative Scott Perry (R., Pa.), an ally of former president Donald Trump, said Tuesday that the FBI confiscated his personal phone one day after federal agents searched Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, according to a new report.

“This morning, while traveling with my family, 3 FBI agents visited me and seized my cell phone,” Perry told Fox News. “They made no attempt to contact my lawyer, who would have made arrangements for them to have my phone if that was their wish.”

Perry added that he is “outraged — though not surprised — that the FBI under the direction of Merrick Garland’s DOJ would seize the phone of a sitting Member of Congress.”

He told the outlet that his phone “contains info about my legislative and political activities, and personal/private discussions with my wife, family, constituents, and friends,” adding, “none of this is the government’s business.”

He called it an “unnecessary and aggressive action” and blasted the FBI for “banana-republic tactics.”

And there was this on CBS in another widely reported bit of stunning news:

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s phone seized by FBI at Hardee’s, he says

The CBS story reported:

“Lindell claimed in a video posted online Tuesday that FBI agents approached him after he ordered food at a Hardee’s drive-thru in Mankato, Minnesota. Patrick McSweeney, an attorney for Lindell, confirmed in an email to CBS News that the subpoena was served and Lindell’s cell phone was confiscated.

‘We pull ahead and a car comes perpendicular and parks a little ways in front of us, and I’ve been around the block, and I said to my buddy, I said, ‘Uh that’s either a bad guy, or it’s FBI,’ Lindell said in the video.”

Fox News has also headlined this:

DOJ issues more than 30 subpoenas to Trump associates: source

The DOJ also seized the phones belonging to two top Trump advisers

The Fox story reported this:

The Department of Justice has issued a flurry of over 30 subpoenas to aides of former President Donald Trump, a source familiar with the federal investigation confirmed to Fox News.

The Justice Department also seized phones from two top Trump advisers in the investigation.

And the other week, Fox host Tucker Carlson interviewed a New Jersey woman named Lisa Gallagher. Here’s a bit of the transcript:

TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: Lisa Gallagher is one of the many Trump supporters who woke up to an FBI raid earlier this month and we are grateful she is joining us to tell us about it. Lisa, thank you so much for coming on. So I just want to be clear, you have not committed a crime of any kind. I don’t think you have been accused of a crime. You weren’t even at the Capitol on January 6th. I don’t even think you were in Washington.

Tell us how you felt when Joe Biden’s FBI showed up with guns at your home the morning after his speech.

LISA GALLAGHER, TRUMP SUPPORTER: I was terrified. I’ll be honest with you, when my daughter woke me up telling me there were 3 armed FBI officers at my door I thought she was joking. And I immediately tried to throw clothes on. I called my husband. I was crying. My knees were shaking. And even though I knew I had done nothing wrong, after seeing Joe Biden’s speech the night before I thought, “Oh my God, this is political.” And I was frightened. I truly thought they can take me out of here in handcuffs. In my bedroom, I thought “Am I not coming home?” So I went outside. I said, “Gentlemen, you’re scaring me.” They proceeded to tell me they were given an anonymous tip that I was at the Capitol on January 6th.

CARLSON: Even though of course, as we said, they knew you weren’t because they had facial recognition software and there’s no evidence and it’s almost two years ago. Do you know who this anonymous tip, this snitch, was that turned you into federal law enforcement for supporting Trump on Facebook might be?

GALLAGHER: No. I know nothing. And I invited them into my home so I could look at my phone and calendar. And I have subsequently called the FBI office in Newark to just document, know for sure it really was FBI agents at my home. And it was. They said it was an anonymous tip but won’t tell me anything else.

Over at Judicial Watch, there was this headline:

Biden DOJ Uses FBI To Target Parents 

Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton explained:

“Just like that,” Fitton notes, “you had AG Garland essentially issue an all hands on deck command to the national security establishment to target parents that were ‘threatening’ school board members.” The measure, Fitton argues, is “designed to intimidate parents [who are critical] of critical race theory extremism, transgender agenda extremism and the other threats to the safety, security and privacy of their children.” Essentially, “they want everyone now to know that if you go to these board meetings, the FBI may come knock on your door.”

Then, of course, there was this impossible-to-forget story, as reported by Fox:

FBI raids Trump’s Mar-a-Lago: ‘Unprecedented’ for agency to execute search warrant against former president

Former head of the FBI’s Minneapolis Field Office Michael Tabman said the FBI’s execution of a search warrant on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida is ‘unprecedented.’

And, of course, there is, as noted, New York Attorney General Letitia James, who campaigned on using the New York attorney general’s office to target then-President Trump and is now targeting not only the former president but also his family.

Now comes this from investigative reporter John Solomon:

House Republicans say whistleblowers allege FBI purging conservative employees, retaliations

Among the allegations is that the agency has revoked security clearances for whistleblowers who made protected disclosures to Congress.

Solomon reports:

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee say they’ve heard from over a dozen whistleblowers alleging the FBI is purging employees with conservative viewpoints and are calling on a top agency official to speak to them about the allegations.

All of this doesn’t include dawn armed raids on longtime Trump supporter Roger Stone’s home (conveniently covered by a clearly tipped off CNN) and the apartment of Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe.

Hello? Notice a pattern here?

You can be the former president of the United States. You can be the head of one of America’s most famous private companies. You can be a United States congressman. Or a pro-life activist or one of dozens of former Trump aides. You can be a housewife in New Jersey. You can be a parent protesting at a local school board meeting about the leftist indoctrination of your children. Or you can be an FBI whistleblower calling attention to these problems inside the bureau.

And no matter who you are, the Biden Justice Department or a state attorney general like New York’s Letitia James will use the powers of the FBI or the New York criminal justice machinery to criminalize your political beliefs against you.

The other night at his Michigan rally, Trump made a point of saying this, as reported by Newsmax, bold print for emphasis supplied:

“I think they’d like to see me in prison,” he said. “Can you imagine? I think that they’d like that. You know why? You know why? Because they’re sick. They’re sick people.

“The Biden administration is completely corrupt, jailing political opponents just like the Soviet Union, now Russia.”

Trump rebuked the “political persecution” of still-jailed Jan. 6 protesters, denouncing inhumane conditions.

“Likewise, the Biden administration has locked up dozens and dozens of political prisoners in horrific conditions — horrible horrible conditions in Washington,” he said. “So filthy, so dirty that people don’t even want to go there to look. They don’t want to look; they get sick.”

Last Sunday night, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan appeared on Mark Levin’s Life, Liberty & Levin show and said this, as headlined at Breitbart:

Jim Jordan Floats Select Committee, Special Subcommittee to Investigate FBI, DOJ Weaponization

The story reported his appearance on Life, Liberty & Levin this way:

The Ohio Republican called the status quo “frightening” and suggested a Select Committee or a subcommittee were possibilities.

Frightening it is indeed. Just as the former president said:

The Biden administration is completely corrupt, jailing political opponents just like the Soviet Union, now Russia.

Bingo.

To borrow from 1960s astronaut lingo, “America, we have a problem.”

And a seriously dangerous one at that.

Jeffrey Lord
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Jeffrey Lord, a contributing editor to The American Spectator, is a former aide to Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp. An author and former CNN commentator, he writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com. His new book, Swamp Wars: Donald Trump and The New American Populism vs. The Old Order, is now out from Bombardier Books.
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