OPINION:
With former President Donald Trump criminally indicted, America, once the beacon of democracy, has crossed the Rubicon. With the administration’s weaponization of our now dual system of justice under President Biden, our nation is headed straight to Pakistani fascist hell.
The parallels between former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and Mr. Trump are indeed frightening. Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Khan ran as a populist economic nationalist. Victorious, Mr. Khan immediately came under attack from deep state elements in the Pakistani government, including a powerful military — and he was ousted in April 2022.
Fearful Mr. Khan might rise again in the next election, Pakistan’s equivalent of America’s FBI arrested Mr. Khan on trumped-up charges. Even after being set free by Pakistan’s Supreme Court, Mr. Khan is now “legally” forbidden to run for president — the same goal of the current Trump witch hunts.
These frontal assaults on democracy from the left belie an all-too-familiar global pattern. Jair Bolsonaro — the “Trump” of Brazil — lost what many believed was a rigged 2022 presidential election to the socialist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Today, Mr. Bolsonaro is facing bogus charges. If he is found guilty, he will be ineligible to run in the next two elections. Sound familiar?
That Mr. Trump is the clear victim of the Biden administration’s dual system of injustice should be obvious. Here, the tell in Attorney General Merrick Garland and special counsel Jack Smith’s con game is that former Vice Presidents Joe Biden and Mike Pence were caught red-handed with classified documents. Unlike Mr. Trump, neither had the right to declassify them, yet neither of these prima facie guilty politicians is being prosecuted, only the innocent Mr. Trump.
As egregious, Hunter Biden has yet to be indicted for what his own laptop indicates are crimes ranging from illegal gun and drug use to unlawful foreign lobbying and outright treason in his dealings with China. This inaction after three years in what the Department of Justice insists remains an “active” case.
Meanwhile, erstwhile Trump advisers like Steve Bannon get rushed to judgment, and the Justice Department literally pulls a fast one on Mr. Trump by indicting him in Florida’s so-called rocket docket — a jurisdiction known for its speedy trials. The rabidly partisan Mr. Smith, whose wife is a Biden donor and Michelle Obama propagandist, hopes Miami’s rocket docket will convict Mr. Trump before the 2024 election and knock him out of the race.
This latest turn of the DOJ screw is nothing new. As one of only three senior White House officials with Mr. Trump from the 2016 campaign to today, I have witnessed firsthand the sedition and treason of top government and law enforcement partisans out to get him.
As Exhibit A, there is the ill-fated, FBI-orchestrated Russia hoax. It began in 2016 and sought to prevent Mr. Trump from taking office. While this first attempted coup crashed and burned, it would take down good, brave men like Michael Flynn as collateral damage.
The two impeachment attempts that would follow were nothing less than partisan sedition. They sought to overthrow the sitting Trump government or, in a clear case of election meddling, at least wound him for his 2020 reelection bid.
Never-Trump elements at the DOJ and FBI were also instrumental in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story and promoting the falsehood of “Russian disinformation,” including both FBI Director Chris Wray and, most notoriously, Mr. Trump’s RINO Attorney General Bill Barr, now on Fox News trashing Mr. Trump. As polls clearly indicate, full “laptop from hell” transparency from Messrs. Barr, Wray and DOJ would have decisively swung the 2020 race to Mr. Trump. That was not just election tampering, it was a seditious conspiracy and coup d’etat.
It’s not just Mr. Trump at risk but all those who loyally served in the Trump White House. At that White House, I helped save shipyards and tank plants and create hundreds of thousands of good-paying manufacturing and defense jobs. During the pandemic, I likewise helped save tens of thousands of American lives through the timely provision of ventilators, personal protective equipment, and therapeutics.
Despite that meritorious service, I am now being prosecuted for an alleged “crime” that no senior White House official in the history of our Republic has ever been charged with. Indeed, the very same DOJ now bringing charges has a long-standing policy across party lines that, to protect the constitutional separation of powers and sanctity of executive privilege, senior White House officials and “alter egos of the president” such as myself cannot be compelled to testify before Congress. But don’t cry for me, Argentina.
Virtually everyone I served with in the Trump White House has received a subpoena from this administration or is a target of an investigation — Stephen Miller, Dan Scavino, Mark Meadows, Pat Cipollone, Jared Kushner, Jeffrey Clark, the list goes on.
No matter how all of these witch hunts turn out, the Biden administration — with scurrilous assists from RINOs like Messrs. Barr and Wray — have already done incalculable harm. Who will ever want to serve in the White House if all that awaits are crippling lawfare bills and a possible prison cell as soon as the partisan tables turn?
America is now Amerika, and we have already turned into Pakistan.
• Peter Navarro served as former President Donald Trump’s manufacturing czar and Defense Production Act policy coordinator. This commentary originally appeared at www.peternavarro.substack.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.