You can be your own worst enemy. It’s a lesson the Trump prosecutors learned the hard way in 2024.
Alvin Bragg, Jack Smith, and Fani Willis each went in for kill shots against Donald Trump in 2024. They had on their side dozens of spurious felony charges, juries stacked with frothing libs, and a media salivating at the prospect of claiming their long-awaited presidential scalp.
Donny wouldn’t be able to wiggle himself out of this one. Until he did.
Willis was first up to bat, with 41 charges primed and ready to go against Trump all because he politely asked Georgia’s secretary of state to look for some missing votes. Willis's charges included racketeering, which had the media very excited. Willis, after all, knows a thing or two about RICO. She threw the book at rapper Young Thug for the alleged crime of writing song lyrics and, after a two-year trial, scored a hefty sentence of time served. You go, girl!
But her case against Trump was over before it even started. First, an overeager Willis released Trump’s mugshot to the public, granting the former president an iconic political image just in time for the start of the 2024 primaries and galvanizing voters behind the Don. Don't take our word for it, take rapper Chief Keef's:
"All da Blacks finna have my boy back," Mr. Keef said. And they did. Roughly 30 percent of Black men under 45 voted for Trump in 2024, doubling his performance in 2020.
The nail in Willis's coffin came in January when it was revealed that Willis was secretly banging Nathan Wade, her hand-selected special prosecutor who had no prior prosecutorial experience. He raked in $650,000 for his "hard work" with Willis on the case, earnings he used to secretly treat Willis to lavish vacations all around the world.
The law forced Wade to resign from the case in March, a big loss for Willis because, somehow, her lover had become the brains of their operation. Willis followed his fate just before Christmas when a Georgia Court of Appeals removed her from the proceedings. So. Much. Winning.
Up next was Bragg, the progressive Manhattan prosecutor who ran on campaign promises to go after Trump and touted his record of lawsuits against the real estate tycoon. Bragg followed through on the threat, slapping Trump with 34 felony charges in April 2023.
It whet the appetite of the most ardent anti-Trumpers. Bragg charged that Trump manipulated his company business records related to a $130,000 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels to illegally corrupt the 2016 election. Never mind that the Federal Election Commission declined to punish Trump for the payments, nor that respected legal analysts found the case to be lacking. That didn’t stop a New York jury from finding Trump guilty on all of Bragg’s charges.
But it was Trump who won the court of public opinion.
"Trump is a real n—," rapper Kodak Black declared after his conviction. "He’s a soldier. It ain’t how he snapped for a n—. It ain’t even about that. Y’all get off Trump, man." Even Green Party presidential nominee Cornel West jumped on the Trump train after the Bragg verdict, calling the former president a "bonafide gangster."
And finally, there was Jack Smith. According to the media, democracy itself almost died on Jan. 6, 2021. Smith was to be their standard bearer, leading the crusade against Trump for his alleged crimes against our sacred norms.
But on Election Day, it was Republican voters who were more concerned about threats to democracy in the United States, exit polls found. Following Trump’s victory, Smith announced he would retire, taking the walk of shame to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to dismiss his case against the incoming president. Great work, Jack, you played yourself.
Bragg, Smith, and Willis may very well be on their way to collecting unemployment checks. But they can do so with their heads held high as Washington Free Beacon Men of the Year.
