Recently President Trump commented on the Bowe Bergdahl case --  the guy who deserted in combat and thereby caused Americans to be seriously wounded trying to rescue him because he didn’t have the guts to leave a note saying he deserted.

Lawyers, including conservatives at National Review, are  now declaring that the President can’t comment on an unclassified matter of national importance because he might keep a traitor from getting a fair trial.

In a sense they’re right, but they don’t realize why.

We talk of the DC bubble but there is another bubble that has a direct impact on Americans; the Legal Bubble (LB).

In the LB, lawyers, judges and various support people have bought into the very illiberal idea that the justice system isn’t about justice, but about following the rules.  That’s why they have no problem throwing out physical evidence because a cop found it after making a decision that it took five judges six months to figure out was wrong.

That’s a necessary change in perspective to mollify the consciences of attorneys like Hillary Clinton, whose job apparently entails, to greater or lesser extent, ensuring that child molesters, rapists, murderers, and drug dealers avoid paying for their crimes.

After all, a lawyer who thinks the purpose of the courts is to ensure that the innocent are found innocent and the guilty are found guilty couldn’t make much money, because while the cops do make mistakes they don’t do so often and when truly innocent people are accused of real crimes -- not fake ones like not baking cakes for gay “weddings” -- they rarely have the sort of money the drug dealers and other crooks have to spend on lawyers.

If criminal lawyers are going to stay rich, we can’t have them rooting for justice. In the LB, those shysters can sleep well because they’ve been taught in law school that so long as the rules are followed it’s perfectly ok if a child rapist is let loose to prey on other children.

That’s why non-lawyers hate lawyers. Too many lawyers will use the law to unjustly hurt others in return for money.

Now, it’s true that many lawyers are fine folk. They take care of wills and business law issues. They don’t work to put drug dealers back on the street. They prosecute crooks. They’re honest. 

But they’re condemned by their company and by the fact that they buy into the LB ideal; follow the rules, don’t worry about justice.

In the Bergdahl case, we’re being told by denizens of the LB that because Trump heads the military he can’t say what he thinks about an admitted traitor -- remember that Bergdahl pled guilty before Trump said anything about Bergdahl since Trump became President. 

That’s the motto of the LB; the criminal is the only one we care about, his victims have no rights -- after all, they can’t pay us. Even the President's 1st Amendment rights must bow to an admitted traitor’s right, nowhere enumerated in the Constitution, to not be justly sentenced.  A fair trial does not have to be a trial with everyone in the country being silent.

To the LB folk it’s all a game.  If the President says what is true it doesn’t matter; it’s the equivalent of his stepping on the line during his tennis serve. Because the LB makes the law a game so as to comfort the shysters who make a royal living off the dead bodies of drug addicts and the battered bodies of raped women we are told that a traitor could walk free because the President commented on his case.

Apart from the obvious insanity, the argument is fundamentally flawed because it presupposes that the judge in this case will either be unethical and choose to “listen” to the President in order to curry favor or be so stupid as to not be able to distinguish between Trump expressing an opinion and Trump issuing an order.

The question is, if the judge is that unethical or that stupid, then why is he a judge? In the LB, all judges command respect even the ones who clearly distort the Constitution in direct defiance of their oaths.  Hence it would be impossible for an LB denizen to think that the judge would actually change his sentencing based on Trump’s comment.

The reality is that many lawyers don’t care if justice is done; they’ve found a technicality by which a guilty person can get off and that’s what they really live for.

The conservative lawyers who are all upset about this -- but weren’t apparently concerned about tainting jury pools when Obama said Bergdahl was a hero -- are more likely concerned that people will lose confidence in the system if the rules aren’t followed.

What they don’t realize is that after years of courts acting like royalty and ignoring the Constitution, after years of seeing guilty people walk because of technicalities, what will cause the people to lose what little confidence they have in the system is not Trump commenting on Bergdahl but Bergdahl not getting a stiff sentence for his treason because Trump said what the people were thinking.

That’s why conservative lawyers are attacking Trump -- well the fact that Trump isn’t an oily member of the ruling elite does also contribute -- because they know that justice isn’t the issue any more; it’s all about following the rules. No sane person would condemn the President for saying that they should throw the book at an admitted deserter whose actions led to other people, the real heroes, being shot.

There is no danger of people losing confidence in the system because of Trump’s comment. There is a great danger of people losing what little trust they have in the system if Bergdahl gets off on a technicality.

You can read more of tom’s rants at his blog, Conversations about the obvious and feel free to follow him on Twitter