Biden on Trump: “No one is above the Law;” Except for Israel’s Netanyahu
Juan Cole 06/01/2024
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Donald J. Trump, found responsible for rape and found guilty of a whole raft of election fraud felonies, is a horrible person and bears no comparison to Joe Biden. But in one respect they have an unfortunate resemblance. Both have shown profound disrespect for the courts adjudicating their or their friends’ cases.
In his remarks on Trump’s guilty verdict on Friday, Biden said,
“I just want to say a few words about what happened yesterday in New York City. The American principle that no one is above the law was reaffirmed. Donald Trump was given every opportunity to defend himself. This was a state case, not a federal case, and it was heard by a jury of 12 citizens—-Americans, 12 people like you, like the millions of Americans who have served on juries. This jury was chosen the same way every jury in America is chosen, and it was a process that Donald Trump’s attorney was part of.
“The jury heard five weeks of evidence, and after careful deliberation, they reached a unanimous verdict. They found Donald Trump guilty on all 34 felony counts. He will be given the opportunity, as he should be, to appeal that decision, just like everyone else has that opportunity. That’s how the American system of justice works.
“It is reckless, dangerous, and irresponsible for anyone to say this was rigged just because they don’t like the verdict. Our justice system has endured for nearly 250 years and it literally is the cornerstone of America, our justice system. The justice system should be respected and we should never allow anyone to tear it down. It’s as simple as that. That’s America, that’s who we are, and that’s who we’ll always be, God willing.”
Those are noble sentiments. Biden was pushing back against Trump’s unhinged rants against the court that convicted him.
Trump alleges that Judge Juan Merchan had “conflicts” though he refuses to specify them. He says he didn’t testify because; “The theory is you never testify because as soon as you testify — anybody, if it were George Washington, don’t testify because they’ll get you on something that you said slightly wrong, and then they sue you for perjury.”
Actually, if you don’t commit perjury then you won’t be charged with perjury.
He said of the New York County District court and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, “They are in total conjunction with the White House and the DOJ. Just so you understand, this is all done by Biden and his people.”
This allegation is entirely untrue. Biden has no authority over a state court.
Trump also asserted that he is innocent of the charges and said he never shtupped that porn star.
But Biden contradicted himself on every single point when it came to his reaction, and that of his spokesmen, to the request for warrants by the International Criminal Court for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
When ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announced the warrant request, Biden immediately said, “Let me be clear, we reject the ICC’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders.”
He went on to parrot a talking point circulated by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbyists, who work closely with Israel’s “Ministry of Strategic Affairs” psy-op outfit, saying that there is no equivalence between Israel and Hamas. But Karim Khan’s warrant request, which also targeted three Hamas leaders, charged them with different crimes than it did Netanyahu and Gallant. It made no equivalence between the two. Biden’s purloined talking point is without substance.
Biden said he did not believe that Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza. But the ICC did not charge Israel with genocide in the warrant request, but rather with war crimes and crimes against humanity. So that assertion was a mere red herring.
Biden challenged the jurisdiction of the ICC over Israeli war crimes in Gaza: “We don’t recognize their jurisdiction, the way it’s been exercised, and it’s that simple.”
But by the rules of the Rome Statute, signed by 124 of the world’s nations, including several key NATO countries that are close US allies, the court does indeed have jurisdiction. Palestine became a non-member observer state of the UN in 2012 and signed the Rome Statute in 2015. In 2018 the Palestine Authority, which was created by Bill Clinton’s Oslo Peace Treaty, asked the ICC to take up war crimes in Palestine, and in 2021 the court concluded that it had jurisdiction.
Biden’s rejection of jurisdiction is anyway hypocritical, because his administration jumped up and down for joy when in 2023 the ICC indicted Russian strongman Vladimir Putin for war crimes in Ukraine. Neither Russia nor Ukraine are signatories to the Rome Statute and so ICC jurisdiction there is far less well grounded than its jurisdiction over the Palestinian territories.
Biden’s State Department was ordered, likely by Biden, to falsify a report “to absolve Israel of responsibility for blocking humanitarian aid flows into Gaza, overruling the advice of its own experts, according to a former senior US official who resigned this week.”
Just as Trump rejected the right of the Manhattan district attorney to prosecute him, Biden dismissed the right of the ICC to take up Netanyahu’s obvious war crimes.
Just as Trump thinks he’s above the law, Biden thinks Netanyahu is above the law.
Just as Trump falsifies his business records, Biden falsifies government reports on Israel.
Biden ultimately does not respect the rule of law when it comes to Israeli actions and policies any more than Trump respects the rule of law when it comes to Trump.