Most coverage of Friday's verdict from a Manhattan courthouse has focused on the $350 million plus that rogue judge Arthur F Engoron has demanded Trump cough up - for a "crime" which has no known victims and no identifiable proceeds. Confiscating (with interest) close to half-a-billion dollars for no good reason is certainly unusual, even by the standards of US "justice".
But that's not what caught my eye about Arthur F Wankeron's judgment. The truly striking passage was this (page 90, just before the sign-off):
The Court hereby enjoins Donald Trump and the Trump Organization and its affiliates from applying for loans from any financial institution chartered by or registered with the New York Department of Financial Services for a period of three years.
This struck a chord with me. As many of you know, a little over a week ago, the District of Columbia Superior Court ordered me to pay one million dollars in punitive damages to climate mullah Michael E Mann. So I'm currently living the dimestore version of Trump's travails.
Nobody seemed to think the former president had much chance of winning in this particular venue. So most of the commentary had airily assumed he'd be obliged to kick it upstairs to the appellate court, where he'll surely win. Several legal scholars said the same of my own case. For my own part, I was too focused on the trial to give much attention to what came next. But one hears so much breezy chit-chat in America about appealing this and appealing that that one takes one's appellate rights for granted.
Not so. In order to appeal, a losing party has to post a bond for the amount at issue. That's true for federal and state courts, although there are variations hither and yon: some jurisdictions require you merely to post a bond for the original judgment, others to cover the likely interest that will pile up as your appeal works it way through the choked septic tank of American "justice"; California, for example, won't entertain an appeal until you bond 150 per cent of the amount of the judgment.
This is no small thing, even for those of us at the nickel-and-dime end of the Great American Judicial Shakedown - and especially not when, at the lower-court phase, justice has been comprehensively weaponised against one side of the country's political divide. But to be clear: to appeal Judge Wankeron's decision Trump needs to come up with a bond for at least $350 million.
So, just to complicate the issue, Wankeron forbids him from doing business with any financial institution registered in the State of New York. Which is rather a lot of them, it being the home of Wall Street - and of almost all the big players: J P Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley...
Oh, to be sure, the First National Bank of Dead Moose Junction in Aroostook County, Maine isn't registered in New York. But are they where you go when you need surety for 350 mil?
American "justice", as I have held for virtually the entire twelve years of the Mann case, is evil. The "fifth trial judge" didn't care for the cut of my jib, but I'm a foreigner, and never more foreign than when in a US "court". And the seven-and-a-half billion non-Americans around the planet are united by very little else other than a firm conviction that US "justice" is bonkers.
But this Judge Wankeron is taking it to a whole new level. It's not very difficult, after all, to ramp up the judgment to a number it would be impossible to get a bond for. But why take the chance? Hit Trump for a third-of-a-billion - and take the additional precaution of forbidding him from doing business with any entity in a position to guarantee anything like that amount. It's not just the punishment, but increasingly about closing off options to resist the punishment.
And, by the way, this Trump fellow is what other countries call the Leader of the Opposition: we're talking about the guy running against the ruling party in this year's election. The "banana republic" jibes don't capture the scale of what's going on here - for what ramshackle basket-case in Latin America has ever had the need to confiscate half-a-billion from its political opponent and pass it off as "justice"? We are way beyond bananas here.
The manifest perversion of justice represented by this New York decision is so brazen that the US Supreme Court really should step in and end it now. But they won't, will they? For the last three decades, the American "right" has abandoned every other societal lever in order to focus on getting one more rock-ribbed "originalist" onto the big bench - to the point where we have a six-three so-called "conservative majority". At which point, we're suddenly assured that Chief Justice John Roberts' priority is to avoid the court being dragged into "controversy".
Which is odd. Because the purpose (indeed, the definition) of a court is to adjudicate "controversies". Look it up: it's in your Constitooti-tootin'-tution. No controversy, no court, no need for one. Here's me with the great Shannon Bream a couple of years ago:
But, as I said to Shannon somewhere or other back then, a prioritisation of avoiding "controversy" is surely controversial in itself. And so Roberts's determination that his court not be seen as "political" has mysteriously led to the most politicised courts anywhere in the western world: New York... Georgia... DC... Colorado... Your State Here.
Indeed, there is so little equality before the law in America that a central tenet of that equality - the right to a lawyer - is utterly dead. If you make the mistake of representing Trump, you'll be disbarred and/or criminally charged.
So that's the continuum - from my lousy million to Trump's third-of-a-billion. And, as Giuliani and Peter Navarro and vdare.com and a whole bunch of others have discovered, there's a place for you somewhere between those two numbers.
This is the criminalisation of opposition - a core definition of unfree societies, but one which Letitia James, the disgraceful Attorney-General of New York, is enthusiastically signing on to. By pretending that what's happening is normal - as Nikki Haley and Conservative Inc are doing - you do no service to the remnants of the republic.
~Like Trump, Steyn staggers on to the next case, and the next appeal. We thank everyone for their messages of encouragement this last grim week. And we especially thank all those who've opted to treat a chum to a SteynOnline Gift Certificate or a Mark Steyn Club Gift Membership.
