Donald Trump may indeed be guilty of the charges for which he was indicted last week…or maybe not. He may even end up being convicted. Regardless, assuming he’s on the ballot, I’ll vote for him, even if he’s dressed in stripes and sitting in a jail cell.

Why? Not because I don’t take seriously handling classified records or trying to “obstruct” the Justice Department. Both are serious. But even if Trump were guilty of both, even if he violated the letter and the spirit of the law, those violations are nothing compared to the federal government weaponization we’ve observed over the last decade and a half.

The Democrat party has spent much of the last fifteen years turning the federal government into an American Stasi to be used against its political opponents in a manner unprecedented in American history.

Barack Obama took aim at the Constitution in 2010 when his Justice Department targeted the press under the guise of “national security.” The DOJ seized records from FOX News reporter James Rosen and accused him of “espionage” for his reporting on American policy towards North Korea. Three years later, they used similar tactics against the Associated Press.

Not content to eviscerate freedom of the press, Obama next set his sights on freedom of speech, this time harnessing the IRS to undermine the Constitution.

Other presidents have been accused of using the IRS against opponents, but they were pikers compared to Obama’s war on speech. The IRS sought to smother hundreds of grassroots Tea Party organizations in their bassinets before they could even crawl. The likely result of that “mistreatment” of grassroots opponents was that Barack Obama won reelection despite having 5 million fewer votes than he did in 2008. Contrast that with Donald Trump, who grew his vote total by 12 million in 2020 but somehow “lost” his reelection bid.

Image by Vince Coyner.

Then came Hillary Clinton's “inevitable” coronation, which had to be guaranteed. The vehicle for that guarantee was the Russia collusion hoax that Hillary Clinton started and Obama knew about. The Durham Report lays out in black and white exactly how much the DOJ has been politicized. The FBI not only should never have investigated Trump for Russia collusion but, for several years, various FBI and other officials fabricated evidence, lied to judges, lied to Congress, ignored exculpatory evidence, and sought to entrap people in Trump’s coterie to coerce them into testifying against him.

As a result of the Justice Department’s persecution of Donald Trump, not only was his term hobbled by investigations but, simultaneously, he had to survive attacks from virtually every corner, including legislators allegedly on his side. Perhaps most perniciously, largely because Democrats weaponized the DOJ, more than half the country doesn’t trust the “premier” law enforcement agency in the nation.

In 2023, fully 70% of Americans feel the FBI may be comprising our elections. To put that in perspective, after decades of the media propaganda machine lying about police hunting black men, black Americans still have a higher opinion of local police than Americans in general do of the FBI.

By 2020, the apparatchiks in the Justice Department had decided that they were America’s white knights and would save the country from having to endure another term of Donald Trump as president. As the election was wrapping up, the New York Post ran a story about a laptop owned by Joe Biden’s son Hunter. The laptop was full of information about drugs, prostitution, and various other illegal activities in which the younger Biden had engaged.

More problematic, however, were the emails and other information that implicated his father, candidate Joe Biden, in various schemes that saw his son and brother receive handsome payments from various foreign entities in exchange for Biden’s influencing American policy while Vice President. The FBI worked back channels with America’s modern public squares, Twitter, Facebook, and other media outlets, to censor the story and simultaneously suggest that it was Russian disinformation.

The FBI white knights succeeded in their quest to save the nation. In an election that turned on fewer than 100,000 votes, fully 13 million Americans (16% of Biden’s “84 million” voters) said they would have changed their vote had they known about the laptop story. That is what you call a coup d'état. But as it was the Democrats and the Justice Department leadership running the coup, there was no problem.

Once in office, Biden lost no time weaponizing the DOJ against Trump supporters, including hundreds of Jan 6 protesters, some of whom never even entered the Capitol. On January 29, 2021, a mere nine days after Biden took office, the administration implemented plans to target conservatives by gaming out scenarios about vulnerable citizens facing “radicalization” by pro-life advocates and small government proponents.

The following year, the Justice Department would target as “domestic terrorists” parents concerned about what was being taught to their children in public schools. Later, FBI management would be accused of forcing agents to fabricate “extremist” and “white supremacist” cases because “The demand for white supremacy vastly outstrips the supply of white supremacy.” And just to put a fine point on it, in April, Biden blasted “Those MAGA Republicans” as the real problem America faces.

This brings us back to Donald Trump and the indictment. The reality is there’s likely not a single voter in America who will be swayed one way or another based on the outcome of that case. If elections were about the candidate, in 2022, Pennsylvania Democrats wouldn’t have elected to represent them as Senator a guy who would have trouble completing a kindergarten art project over an erudite, if slightly odd, cardiothoracic surgeon.

Americans of every stripe understand what the choice is in 2024. Most certainly, there are voters who are turned off by some of Trump’s antics and statements, but the reality is anyone who says they would be willing to vote for Ron DeSantis but not Donald Trump is lying…either to themselves or to you. They’re simply looking for a fig leaf to cover their consciences so they can vote for a Democrat.

While at the end of the day, the choice may ostensibly come down to a doddering Alzheimer’s patient versus a convicted ex-president, or even a “vapid pander bear” versus the “Grand Wizard” of the KKK, the reality is the choice on the ballot next November is stark: The continued weaponization of government against the citizens or a resurgence of the freedom and limited government that are at the foundation of America’s greatness.

The Democrat Party and the rest of its swamp cabal have clearly demonstrated they are more than willing to ignore the Constitution and use the police power of government to coerce, control and, if necessary, crucify anyone not willing to go along with their cancerous progressive agenda. Donald Trump doesn’t want to let them do that.

Trump may be a highly flawed man, but as the nation watches its government transform into a repressive, progressive Borg, who better to lead the charge to destroy it than the man who has weathered its slings and arrows for the last eight years? More than perhaps anyone in America, Trump understands the threat because he’s experienced firsthand the danger it poses. And unlike most, he recognizes who the real target is, something he pointed out to supporters in 2019: “In reality, they’re not after me, they’re after you. I’m just in the way.”

Whether sitting in a jail cell or out on the campaign trail, Donald Trump is the touchstone of the Republic. We either go forward as a nation of laws limited by the Constitution, or we transform into a nation of men governed only by coercion and brute force. There is no middle ground. Given that, I’ll take the guy in an orange jumpsuit every time.

Follow Vince on Twitter at: ImperfectUSA.