We see all around us the detritus left by the wrecking crew of woke-ism, damaging our institutions and savaging our traditions, customs and history by preaching the poisonous theme that America was never great as it was built on the backs of slaves and is forever tainted by that history. This note will be about one of those traditions, the sacred doctrine in American law that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty. Examples of the damage done to that bedrock principle abound in the past few years of vicious lawfare, principally against President Trump and several lawyers who had the temerity to represent him in the various spurious lawsuits, impeachments, indictments, arrests, etc. to which he has been subjected. One example out of many would be the preposterous filing of the Special Counsel’s “report” in the record of the so-called January 6 case. It is replete with numerous unproven and untested allegations, especially egregious after the Supreme Court had all but finished off any remaining vitality that case had in its presidential immunity ruling. It must also be noted that the federal judge in that case, who had publicly made her loathing of President Trump clear in on-the-record comments in her Court, was only too happy to go along with this outrageous stunt.

We are now seeing another version of this tragedy play out in the case of former Rep. Matt Gaetz who is facing the nearly unprecedented release of the House Ethics Committee report after his resignation from Congress. This report, which could well be public by the time this post is published, will almost certainly contain untested, unproven, unchallenged assertions; these allegations were considered by the Biden Department of Justice, no friend of the former Congressman, but determined to be too weak upon which to base a prosecution.

Here I should note something in the way of a disclaimer: As a constituent of Mr. Gaetz when he represented the First Congressional District of Florida, I should make it crystal clear that I am no fan of his and that the reasons for my opinion of him are not germane to this discussion. That is since I write this not in the defense of Matt Gaetz, the person, but of Matt Gaetz, the American citizen entitled to the full panoply of rights and privileges we know as due process under the law.

The early stages of these attacks started within hours of President Trump’s announcement of his nomination as Attorney General. Several Republican senators raced to the TV cameras—their natural habitat—to announce, without the benefit of hearing from the nominee himself, that they would likely vote against his confirmation. Enough senators expressed their “reservations” to persuade Gaetz to ask President Trump to withdraw his nomination. He subsequently resigned from Congress which, according to reports of commentators who have studied the history of similar ethics investigations, is a move that almost always brings the case to an end with the certainty that the report would not be officially released by the committee. It goes without saying that given the current milieu prevailing in Washington, in which even a draft opinion of a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States was leaked, it may be considered a strong presumption that some enterprising Trump-hating staffer—they are, after all, thick on the ground—will find a way to get all this “important for the American people to know” slanderous gossip in the early editions of the Washington Post.

When the decision of the committee to release the report was announced, Gaetz released this statement which cuts right to the heart of this denial of his right to confront his accusers and present a full defense in a proper forum:

The Biden/Garland DOJ spent years reviewing allegations that I committed various crimes.

I was charged with nothing: FULLY EXONERATED. Not even a campaign finance violation. And the people investigating me hated me.

Then, the very “witnesses” DOJ deemed not-credible were…

— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) December 18, 2024

Andrea Widburg had this to say in a piece entitled “Has the House denied Matt Gaetz even a pretense of due process?”:

During his tenure in the House of Representatives, Matt Gaetz was a firebrand in the name of conservative politics. What he forgot is that there is no one more vindictive than a politician who is blocked from getting what he or she wants. So, when he left the House in November, he left few friends behind. That may explain why the House Ethics Committee has decided to go ahead and release its report on Gaetz. Gaetz, however, claims that he was denied due process, and if he's correct, this is an utterly sleazy, dishonorable, and vindictive act.

The news broke today that the House Ethics Committee will be releasing the report in January—a vote that it took in secret, which itself is sleazy.

The reason for the investigation was because Gaetz’s political enemies claimed for years that he had affairs with underage girls and even transported them across state lines. The thing is that the FBI and DOJ—both of which despise Gaetz and undoubtedly wish him at the bottom of the ocean—were unable to dig up any evidence that he engaged in criminal acts. What this suggests is that the House report simply says that Gaetz had a tawdry private life—as if that’s something exceptional for members of Congress.

[snip]

What’s even worse, if Gaetz is to be believed, is that anything in the report that goes beyond saying he was a party boy was collected without regard for Gaetz’s due process rights. Not only was he denied a chance to confront the witnesses against him, but he was denied even the chance to know their allegations [emphasis added].

In 2006 the lives of three young Duke University students and members of its lacrosse team were all but destroyed by the allegations of a woman that she had been hired to “perform” at a party at their house and was sexually assaulted in grotesque ways over the evening. The incredible, in the true sense of the word, scenario which followed was exhaustively researched and reported in an excellent book entitled “Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case”. The essence of the case is summed up in a review of the book:

What began that night shocked Duke University and Durham, North Carolina.

And it continues to captivate the nation: the Duke lacrosse team members’ alleged rape of an African-American stripper and the unraveling of the case against them.
In this ever-deepening American tragedy, Stuart Taylor Jr. and KC Johnson argue, law enforcement, a campaigning prosecutor, biased journalists, and left-leaning academics repeatedly refused to pursue the truth while scapegoats were made of these young men, recklessly tarnishing their lives.
The story harbors multiple dramas, including the actions of a DA running for office; the inappropriate charges that should have been apparent to academics at Duke many months ago; the local and national media, who were so slow to take account of the publicly available evidence; and the appalling reactions of law enforcement, academia, and many black leaders.

The authors’ reporting and conclusions about the disgraceful rush to judgment of so many involved in the case, especially the DA Michael Nifong, and perhaps even more sickening, the mob of faculty members which published a letter condemning the young men due to the political correctness virus then in its beginning stages, now appear even more prescient in view of a very recent development. The accuser, now in prison for killing her boyfriend in a later incident, has publicly confessed that she made the entire story up.

One reviewer, revealing the origin of the title of the book: “Guilty until proven innocent was a concept expressed by Duke University’s president Richard Brodhead, among others, betraying a stunning misapprehension of America’s justice system in the case of the Duke lacrosse players wrongfully indicted for raping a black stripper in 2006.”

All of this may seem to be the abstruse rantings of a retired trial lawyer until one asks this question: How would I want to be treated if, God forbid, I wound up in the same situation as Mr. Gaetz or the Duke lacrosse team members or President Trump?

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