Is Trump Innocent or Guilty?

As you all well know, a lot has been said about last Wednesday, January 6th, “Save America” rally, which ended with an untimely violent protest in which five people lost their lives. Once again, as I mentioned in my article of yesterday, there is absolutely no excuse whatsoever for this kind of behavior, be it from the Left or from the Right.

Pursuant to the events that transpired at the Capitol, as you all well know also, Democrats wasted no time in laying the blame on Donald Trump. To make matters worse, the House impeached the president for the second time in his term as President – the first time this happens in U.S. history. Throughout this sad episode, we have seen how many in the Republican caucus sided with Democrats in blaming Trump. In the House of Representatives, ten Republican congressmen and congresswomen, voted to impeach the president, led by the 3rd Republican ranking member, Liz Cheney, the daughter of former Vice-President Dick Cheney.

Other than Congress and Washingtonian political animals, regretfully, Donald Trump has also been convicted in the “court of public opinion” – our court, the court where all of us, you and me, and every American becomes judge and jury at the same time. I say, [the] most relevant criteria that separates a court of public opinion with courts in our legal system, is that in ours [the public], we can pass judgement without following any of the customary legal procedures governing regular courts. In ours, hearsay evidence is admissible; in ours we can convict without a trial and anyone can be presumed guilty beforehand.

Ironically, with each day that goes by, I sense we are getting closer and closer to where the court of public opinion and our true courts are almost the same. Case in point, the impeachment of Donald Trump for what happened on the Capitol last Wednesday. You know, sadly, the one thing that the Left is good at is manipulating public opinion. I have to say, the Communist Democrats have done a masterful job at indoctrinating Americans – at selling them their talking points, whichever these may be.

I know that, in the case of last week’s Capitol riot, there have been many Trump supporters, maybe some of you in my audience who quickly passed judgement on the President, maybe joined-in his condemnation of guilt for what happened. Honestly, I cannot blame you for it, given much of what I have seen published by the fringe fake-news media. I must be honest, I, myself had doubts at the beginning in Trump’s role regarding his alleged “incitement” of the crowds to a violent attack on the Capitol.

As a writer, however, I have been trained to always try and search for truths in my narratives – it always pays off in the end. As a Cuban-American, once exposed to Communism, I have also been obsessed with this nation’s legal system – the greatness of it relative to guaranteeing basic freedoms to individuals founded in that Eleventh Amendment of the Constitution that says: “Everyone charged with a penal offense has the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.”

In lieu of this basic right, often dismissed in the court of public opinion, I decided to evaluate the handling of this Capitol crisis by the Democratic leadership. The very first thing that caught my eye was the fact that the President’s impeachment was carried out without any hearings on the motion to impeach. By their own initiative Democrats just charged the President and proceeded with their votes to impeach, setting a most dangerous precedent for political parties to remove Presidents at will – a very worrisome precedent I may add.

Notwithstanding the anomaly of a hurried impeachment without a hearing, I decided, for the benefit of all of you who follow my narratives, to take it a step further. I decided to stick to our old democratic ways and offer our President the same presumption of innocence afforded every citizen in this country. To that end, I searched for the legal arguments that would be construed to govern the rule-of-law in the Capitol incident.
I will preface the arguments that follow with a disclaimer that, I am neither a lawyer nor I want to pretend to be one. Matter of fact, if you happen to be a lawyer reading this narrative, I will respectfully defer to your legal opinions on what I am about to assert. Having said that, as all lawyers would do, I went searching for case-history in the events that transpired on the Capitol. At centerstage of this legal argument is the question: Is Donald Trump guilty of “Incitement” – of inciting the crowds to the violence that followed?

While looking for answers to this fundamental question, I ran across an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, written by a lead-authority in the matter, attorney Jeffrey Scott Shapiro – a renown Prosecuting Attorney in the District of Columbia [D.C.], who specializes and has tried hundreds of cases dealing with “Unlawful Protesters.” Regarding the Capitol’s incident and Trump’s guilt thereof, following is what Shapiro has to say.

The specific case-law applicable to Trump’s alleged guilt was a landmark decision in the “Brandenburg vs. Ohio” case whereby on June 8th, 1969, the Supreme Court ruled that “the government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless the speech is directed to inciting or producing an imminent lawless action and is likely to incite such action. [395 U.S. 444 89 S. Ct. 1827; 23 L. Ed. 2d 430; 1969 U.S. LEXIS 1367; 48 Ohio Op. 2d 320.] Behind this ruling was the notion that the U.S. Supreme court does not want to criminalize speech unless it is necessary.

According to Shapiro, the Court’s position was “not to hold people in this country liable for “subjective” interpretations of a “listener.” It has, Shapiro says, to be actually “objective” words spoken by a public speaker. In Trump’s case, the President made it clear by saying: “we are going to peacefully march to the Capitol, and we are going to cheer senators.” Never did Trump suggest, imply, and / or allude to anything which could be construed to be a violent attack, hence his innocence of the charges alluded to in his impeachment.

In short, according to Shapiro, besides the fact that House Democrats simply bypassed the chance to hear the evidence, there are no legal basis whatsoever for Trump’s impeachment. As prescribed by law, the impeachment procedure now requires for it to go to the Senate floor, where it will be tried at this chamber and where I hope senators, no matter which side of the aisle, would adhere to the laws of the land as per my exposé. I am hopeful that, in following this nation’s most vital principle of law, the Senate does not make impeachment in this country a political rather than a judicial issue – if they do so, our nation is in much deeper problems than we could ever anticipate.

In ending, I will say this much. Based on our democratic system or what is left of it anyways, you are all entitled to your opinions on Trump’s guilt, one way or the other. Based on what I have heard in the past few days, I think, there are many in the country who have been swayed by the court of public opinion and have rushed to find our president “guilty-as-charged”, wholly basing their opinion[s] on a highly sophisticated, well-oiled propaganda machinery who’s only agenda for the past four years has been to oust [the] only President who has stood on the way of the Communist takeover long-in-the-makings.

For those of you who may be looking upon Trump as somewhat responsible or guilty of the Capitol incident, I would politely urge you to re-think your vantage point. If nothing else, we need to adjudicate President Donald Trump with the same freedoms afforded every citizen. My narrative today is a friendly and respectful reminder to all that, once again, no matter what the charges are, our system says: “we are all innocent until proven guilty.” May God save us and may God save the United States of America.