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When Stalin wanted to get rid of his political rivals or just of people he feared or disliked, he often sent agents of the secret state police, the Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел (NKVD), a euphemism, meaning People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs. Mostly, the person he disapproved of would just be arrested, whisked away, and executed in a dark cell of the Lubyanka prison or disappeared in a Siberian GULAG.
But eventually, Stalin wanted something more spectacular. A procedure that would crush and destroy his adversary and mark him in the eyes of the Soviet population and the global public (the world press) as a common criminal, whose destruction is well deserved by his unlawful actions. This was typically accomplished by a political show trial.
The NKVD was headed by unscrupulous mass killers like Genrikh Yagoda, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, and Felix Dzerzhinsky. The head of the NKVD would set up the show trial and Andrey Vyshinsky, Stalin’s chief prosecutor, would take over.
Vyshinsky was an influential man in Stalin’s regime, and he was instrumental in suppressing dissent and consolidating Stalin’s power. His show trials were highly orchestrated events designed to humiliate the accused who were often forced to confess to crimes they did not commit. Laws or regulations were fabricated or interpreted to allow the construction of a crime and were used to eliminate perceived threats to the Soviet regime.
Yagoda, Menzhinsky, Dzerzhinsky and Vyshinsky were all Stalin appointees, of course. Vyshinsky’s role as chief prosecutor involved prosecuting those accused of counter-revolutionary activities (insurrection), espionage, and other alleged offenses against the system. His methods were often coercive, and the trials were characterized by a lack of due process and by the use of psychological terror. The accused were frequently denied proper legal representation, and the outcomes of the trials were pre-determined by Stalin or his close assistants.
These show trials served as a means to justify the repression of political opponents, to consolidate Stalin’s power, and to allow the Bolshevist Party to maintain control over the Soviet population. The team Yagoda/Vyshinsky was Stalin’s weapon of legal warfare against anybody who dared to oppose or criticize him.
Hitler had a similar team. It consisted of Dr. Franz Gürtner and Roland Freisler, both Hitler appointees. Gürtner was Generalstaatsanwalt, Chief State Attorney, of the Third Reich, i.e., of Nazi Germany. His responsibilities included supervising the prosecution of political opponents, enforcing discriminatory laws, and ensuring compliance with Nazi ideology. Gürtner operated within the framework of the Nuremberg Laws, which were enacted to systematically discriminate against Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and other groups targeted by the Nazis as inferior or undesirable. His tenure as Generalstaatsanwalt allowed him to implement discriminatory laws and to suppress dissent at the whim and convenience of the Nazi regime. His actions contributed to the persecution and suffering of countless individuals during the entire Nazi era.
Roland Freisler was a German jurist, judge, and politician who played a significant role during the Third Reich. Freisler became a prominent ideologue of Nazism and significantly influenced the Nazification of Germany’s legal system. He attended the 1942 Wannsee Conference, which set the Holocaust in motion. In 1942, he was appointed President of the People’s Court (Volksgerichtshof), overseeing the prosecution of political crimes as a judge. He was notorious for his aggressive personality, humiliation of defendants, and frequent use of the death penalty. He handed down numerous death sentences, including those related to the July 20, 1944, plot to kill Hitler (von Stauffenberg). Many of those found guilty by his court were swiftly executed in the Plötzensee Prison in Berlin.
On February 3, 1945, during an air raid on Berlin, Freisler declined to evacuate. Instead, he stayed in his courtroom to put together files for the trial of Fabian von Schlabrendorff, a German army officer and co-conspirator in the July 20 plot. During the air raid, Freisler was killed when a beam fell on him in the courtroom. (Schlabrendorff lived on to die in 1980). Like Yagoda and Vyshinsky, Gürtner and Freisler artfully and successfully converted political persecution into judicial prosecution, putting a legalistic paint on the elimination of political dissenters.
In my family, we have a close-up and painful example for this kind of understanding of law and justice. My sister-in-law’s paternal uncle was a man named Kurt Jaager. His case is described in a book that investigates the renazification of the German justice system after WWII. The book is written in German and titled “Ich habe nur dem Recht gedient“ (“I only served the law”). Its author is Klaus Detlev Godau-Schuttke. The book was published by the Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft in 1993.
Kurt Jaager was a German judge who served during the Nazi regime under Gürtner and Freisler. He served as a prosecutor with special assignments and joined the Gestapo in 1933. His specialty was to prosecute opponents of the Nazi regime in Austria. Beginning 1943, Jaager worked as prosecutor at the Volksgerichtshof as Freisler’s colleague. In this function he pleaded for and obtained many death sentences. After the collapse of the DDR, researchers discovered entries in the so-called “brown book” that was found in DDR archives, providing evidence that Jaager had personally obtained and signed at least thirteen death sentences. The victims of his jurisprudence were without exception political opponents of the Nazis, among them a worker, who had dared to ridicule Hitler with a harmless joke.
Like Freisler, Jaager was a dyed-in-the-wool Nazi. As late as April 20, 1945, seventeen days before Germany capitulated, with the Russians about to seize total control of Berlin, Jaager filled his briefcase with death sentences he had signed and made his way through the rubble and the fighting to the Brandenburg penitentiary, where he personally supervised the execution of twenty-eight political prisoners.
Jaager’s justification and understanding of his actions is summed up in Mr. Godau-Schuttke’s book title: “I only served the law.” Much like the justification provided by many of the defendants at the Nuremberg trials: “I only followed orders.” The Nuremberg trials made clear that there is a higher bar than laws and orders: justice and human rights and ultimately our conscience of right and wrong. We cannot just hide behind laws and orders. We must question whether laws are just, and orders are righteous.
Now, let us take a look on how politically and ideologically motivated lawfare is currently waged in the USA, a country that still considers itself a democratic republic under the rule of law.
Donald Trump is a very good example for how in our own country a political opponent of the power establishment is being persecuted by being prosecuted.
First there was the “Russian Collusion” accusation. After much ado, nothing was found to incriminate Mr. Trump. Instead, his adversaries and entrappers got away with falsifying records, making up “facts” and even lying to the FISA Court not just once but several times.
Then came two impeachments. Enormous amounts of time and money were wasted but nothing was found that could have convicted Trump.
They used Stormy Daniels and Jean Carroll against him alleging rape charges with no witnesses or evidence other than the assertions of the alleged victims. A payment as part of a non-disclosure agreement became “hush money”.
They accused him of having illegally attempted to change the Georgia election outcome, but the real villain is the DA who is investigating Trump.
They accused him of having misrepresented the value of his assets, when his lender, the Deutsche Bank, stated that they were perfectly satisfied with the financial information Trump provided, that they were paid back on time and that they suffered no damages.
They accused him of having illegally kept classified government documents, when Biden, as VP, also took classified government documents. As VP Biden was not entitled to do so, but as President, Trump was. Trump stored his documents in a safe vault. Biden stored his in a garage. Biden went unpunished but Trump must be crucified.
And then they accused him of having committed “insurrection”. Nobody knows exactly, what committing insurrection actually is. I heard Trump’s speech to the people as they got ready to march toward the Capital on February 6. 2021. I did not hear one word that could be interpreted as inciting people to insurrection. Surely, he did not take any insurgent action himself. Many drummed-up accusations and very little evidence.
And then there is still the question if a President has immunity for his actions during his term or not. Should the Trump haters actually succeed in getting the judicial system to accept that a President can be tried after the end of his term for things he did as President, the office of the President would factually no longer exist, since the President would become a sitting duck.
Who are the legal beagles that are trying to destroy Trump? There is New York State Attorney General Leticia James, an elected official who ran on the promise to bring down Trump. Her campaign was partially financed by left-wing mega-donor George Soros.
Judge Arthur Engoron, who heard Ms. James case, fined Trump $354 million, with interest and penalties $450 millon. This totally exaggerated penalty is clearly aimed at destroying Trump’s reputation and business.
Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the Carroll 1996 sexual assault case told the former president that his right to be present at the trial will be revoked if he remains disruptive (i.e. defends himself verbally!) and ordered Donald Trump to pay the enormous amount of $83.3 million to Ms. Carroll.
DA Fani Willis in Georgia was trying to get Trump for election interference. Turned out that she embezzled $640,000 of tax payer money and spent it on luxurious vacations with her lover, whom she had hired to investigate Trump at $500 per hour.
Clearly, a fine assortment of legal professionals, all of them Democrat hacks, of course, who are trying to destroy a political opponent though lawfare à la Freisler, Vyshinsky, and Jaager. They are twisting and interpreting existing laws so they can serve as weapons against their adversaries. They cannot beat Trump in a fair political contest. Therefore, they try to annihilate him in these show trials making it appear as if Trump goes down because he is a bad person, not because he is a threat to the socialist takeover of the USA.
This entire political witch hunt has been put on stage by Biden’s AG Garland for the sole purpose of ruining Trump and preventing him from becoming President again.
And just like in Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union the media collaborate with the powers that be. The only difference is that under the Nazis and the Bolsheviks the media and the journalists were essentially owned and controlled by the government. In the USA today they collaborate willingly.
Nothing to see here. We only served the law.