Liberal Washington Post columnist and associate editor Ruth Marcus wrote Tuesday that she was worried that former president Donald Trump was getting harsher treatment that “anyone else” in the New York fraud case against him.
“The rule of law means not allowing Trump to evade responsibility, criminal or civil, for his behavior. But it also entails not treating Trump more harshly than anyone else in similar circumstances, and I worry that is what is happening here,” she wrote.
Marcus said that while she believes Trump is a “fraudster,” the punishment the former president received was “unprecedented.”
She also added that she would be “cheering if Trump is ordered to write a big check.”
DONALD TRUMP IN COURT AS CIVIL TRIAL GETS UNDERWAY
“But forcing the sale or other disposition of his businesses, as the judge ordered in his opinion last week, seems both unnecessary and unduly punitive, disproportionate to the offenses charged. And I worry that this consequence would not have been meted out to a different defendant who engaged in similar misconduct,” Marcus continued.
Marcus cites multiple experts, including one who worked at the New York attorney general’s office that said, “legal experts are trying to grapple with this in real time because to the extent that this remedy has been utilized before it hasn’t been utilized for a remedy of this scale and scope.”
Trump’s trial in Manhattan entered day three on Wednesday after Judge Arthur Engoron ruled last week that Trump and his company deceived banks, insurers and more by overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork.
Marcus expressed similar concern in August after the fourth indictment of Trump in Georgia, suggesting it was “one too many.”
After noting there were no legal concerns with regard to state and federal prosecutors pursuing Trump alleged course of conduct, Marcus worried, “Whether that prosecution is advisable, in the wake of federal charges arising out of the same conduct, is a tougher question — one about which I have misgivings.”
Marcus criticized Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis over a lack of “professionalism.”
“Small point, but Monday’s spectacle of an after-hours indictment didn’t exactly inspire confidence in the Willis office’s professionalism,” she wrote.
In her latest column, Marcus adds that there is a “temptation” to lash out against the former president after she wrote that she wished there was a way to adequately punish Trump.
“The temptation to lash out is understandable, especially in the hands of an elected prosecutor deploying a particularly powerful statute,” she wrote.
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