In most cases, when a federal judge issues a directive about pre-trial comportment, a defendant facing criminal charges heeds it. Otherwise, the consequences can be — and usually are — severe. But the case of the United States v. Donald J. Trump is not, obviously, most cases.
And in this case, the defendant — the former President who quickly and unambiguously flouted Judge Tanya Chutkan‘s directives pertaining to intimidation and influence — is benefitting from the very thing he publicly decries: a “two-tiered justice system.”
That’s the truth bomb dropped on the DOJ by “three-decade former state prosecutor” Karen Friedman Agnifilo, who says that in her 30 years in the courts, she has “never seen a defendant treated as leniently as defendant Trump.”
[NOTE: MAGA adherents and Trump cite an alleged “two-tiered justice system” in accusing the DOJ and FBI of bias against Trump. Agnifilo asserts that, yes, there is a two-tiered system right now at DOJ — and its fault lies not in any alleged anti-Trump bias, but in the leniency it shows Trump by allowing him to continue to flout the law.]
When the post-arraignment Trump wrote on social media “If you go after me, I’m coming after you,” Agnifilo characterized the former President’s overt defiance of the court as merely “most recent example of Trump’s flagrant proverbial middle finger in the face of justice.”
Smart move by Jack Smith here, getting Trump’s threats into the record.
— Angry Staffer 🌻 (@Angry_Staffer) August 5, 2023
Trump lawyers are already trying to walk back the threat, but it’s too late for that. https://t.co/O4waxYlERT
Writing for Meidas Touch, Agnifilo delivers a blistering paragraph outlining what she says Trump, unlike any previous defendant, has been able to get away and placing his conduct in the context of the severity of the crimes with which the former President stands accused.
“As a three-decade former state prosecutor in New York, I have never seen a defendant treated as leniently as defendant Trump. He has a rap sheet with 3 open felony indictments, 78-charges, in 3 separate jurisdictions. He has repeatedly threatened prosecutors, judges, and potential witnesses and has his own 757 jumbo jet at the ready to fly anywhere in the world and can abscond at any time. And the nature of his charges are among the most serious there are — he is accused of stealing our nation’s most sensitive secrets, trying to destroy evidence of his crimes, committing fraud in the oval office, and causing a violent insurrection in order to attempt to steal an election he lost, and our democracy.”
“Imagine if he were Black or Muslim,” Agnifilo writes. “There is no doubt he would be incarcerated pending trial.”
Right on cue. How long before he calls her “racist”? The Trump playbook…@MTLegalAF @MeidasTouch https://t.co/7LcA2sIs74
— Karen F Agnifilo (@KFAlegal) August 7, 2023
Agnifilo says further: “One cannot ignore the disparately lenient treatment he is receiving. Even his lowly co-defendant property manager had to post $100,000.00 bond and cannot leave the confines of the Southern District of Florida. Trump can fly anywhere he wants in his plane, has not had to post any bond, and has had no mug shot taken.
“His threats and taunts,” she writes — in other words, his flagrant proverbial middle finger — “are not only crimes, they make a mockery out of our justice system as he openly flouts the rules with almost no consequence.”
