If guilt doesn't matter, neither does due process

Donald Trump Presidential Portrait, 2025. PHOTO: Daniel Torok.

Police detectives or prosecutors may violate due process by cutting corners in the pursuit of what they think is justice. If they believe the accused is guilty regardless, they may decide it's counter-productive to give any ammunition to the defense. They are wrong, very wrong, when they do so.

Trump, in contrast, doesn't care about justice at all, and so he doesn't care about guilt or innocence at all, which means there is no reason for him to respect due process. That is why, at the time of this writing, he has "failed to comply" with a court order to return Abrego Garcia from an El Salvadoran prison he had illegally been deported to.

If Trump doesn't like you or your nationality, he may deport you. If you're a legal, documented immigrant and he doesn't like your opinion, he may deport you. It doesn't matter whether or not you are guilty of a violent crime, or guilty of a bullshit paperwork crime. You could be innocent, and Trump doesn't care. You're gone.

This comes as no surprise.

I was struck by Trump's contempt for the facts regarding guilt or innocence back in the 2016 campaign regarding a crime in which immigration wasn't a factor at all.. On October 10 of that year, I published a blog post, "Trump's sex scandal means black lives don't matter," the day after a Presidential debate between Trump and Hillary Clinton. Here is a condensed version:

I thought the controversy of the relationship between "The Law" and people of color hit Ground Zero on Friday, when Donald Trump insisted that the Central Park Five were guilty.

Shortly after arrests of four black men and one Latino man for a rape in Central Park in 1989, Mr. Trump took out ads in New York's daily newspapers calling for the death penalty.

They were convicted and each served several years in prison. But they were innocent. Everyone acknowledges it, except Donald Trump.

It appears Mr.Trump doesn't care about facts when his mind is made up. He believes five innocent people should still be in prison, if not executed. Their lives - four black lives, one Latino life -don't matter at all to him. That should have been the Number 1 issue in the October 9 debate, but Mrs. Clinton didn't even bring it up. That's because after his Central Park Five comments hit the news, a leaked 11 year-old leaked tape of Mr. Trump discussing his sexual behavior toward women, including an admission to actions that constitute sexual assault, overshadowed it.

[T]aking a "hard line" on crime to such a degree that guilt or innocence doesn't matter, is to violate a sense of justice that would appall even the most craven and narcissistic politicians of the present and past.

It's not about lying, or even being mistaken. it's being willfully out of touch with reality.

[Mrs. Clinton's] refusal to bring up the Central Park Five is akin to a football team electing to punt on third down all the time. It's frustrating and didn't make sense. Mrs. Clinton should have relentlessly baited Mr. Trump over this. Many of Mr. Trump's apologists who defended him over the sexual remark could have learned about this for the very first time and found themselves embarrassed and ashamed.

(Last night, I thought of writing about the link between deportations and Trump's position on the Central Park 5, and then found out that, coincidentally, on the same day the Supreme Court ordered the Administration to facilitate Garcia's release, Trump was sued for defamation by the Central Park 5.)

We have a President who has no interest in justice, and unlike in 2016, I'm not so sure that his supporters care about justice either. The question is whether he will ultimately obey court orders. He did so in his first term, and Presidents have traditionally complied with court orders they disagreed with.

The second Trump administration, however, seems more eager to test the limits of Presidential power. Trump will do what he wants and let the courts sort it out later. A President can do considerable damage to his real or perceived enemies even if the courts eventually rule against him.

The erosion of our civil liberties began long before Trump. We are surveilled without search warrants. Our possessions can be taken from us by cops ("civil asset forfeiture") without due process. A journalist, Julian Assange, was jailed and forced to plead guilty for publishing the truth. And the U.S. fights and funds wars against nations posing no threat to us; civilians in foreign countries are killed at U.S. taxpayer expense with no due process.

In the post-World War II era, U.S. Presidents of both parties have murdered people in other countries by the millions for their "crime" of living under a regime the President doesn't like. These have happened without the "due process" of a Congressional Declaration of War, and often with no Congressional authorization of any kind. Especially since the end of the draft, these wars have been met with either the support or indifference of the American people, who were usually focused on other issues.

And now we have a President with no interest in justice at home. What goes around comes around.

© James L. Wilson

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James Leroy Wilson writes The MVP Chase (subscribe) and JL Cells (subscribe). Thank you for your subscriptions and support! You may contact James for writing, editing, research, and other work: jamesleroywilson-at-gmail.com.