The Marxist Roots of Trump's Indictment

How Leftist Law Schools Weaponized the Legal System against the Right

Oval Office “Crits” Obama and Biden

By President Donald Trump’s acknowledgment, and as explained here recently, it seems merely a matter of time until at least one of the leftist prosecutors feverishly pursuing the forty-fifth president lands an indictment.  Which prosecutor makes this dubious history is not clear, though there is much activity around the Stormy Daniels case in Manhattan and Trump thinks that one will draw blood first.  Yet with so many partisan prosecutors itching to write their names in the history books, and the porn star case the most forced and paltry of the bunch, it would not be surprising to see another indictment emerge first from the myriad of threats Trump faces.

While most commentators are simply fulminating about the injustice of the legal siege Trump confronts, it is important to understand why this has happened.  Specifically, why now?  Why Trump?  The Left says it’s because he is a uniquely lawless president, ignoring the Clinton perjury, the Biden family capers, etc.  In truth, there are very important and discernible reasons why the Left is on the verge of viciously bagging a Republican president this way.

I witnessed the toxic doctrines of Critical Legal Studies and Critical Race Theory taking hold at Harvard Law School.  I ran the Harvard Law School Republicans club when Obama was the de facto leader of the Left there.

As the old saying goes, ideas have consequences, and the no-holds-barred, system-wide effort to “get” Donald J. Trump is not a random event.  It is the culmination of a deliberate ideological program put into motion years ago by the Left in America’s leading law schools.  I know because I was there, at Harvard Law School, during this time. 

In my book about my alma mater, published as I took office as Maricopa County Attorney 18 years ago, I was the first to outline fully how the poisonous, Marxist movement known as Critical Legal Studies had taken root in the Ivy League.  The toxic philosophy spawned offshoots such as Critical Race Theory, whose most famous champion is my classmate, Barack Obama (I ran the Harvard Law School Republicans club when Obama was the de facto leader of the Left at the school).  Critical Legal Studies and related intellectual trends spread slowly over our land.  But now they largely drive American law and society, making a Trump indictment practically inevitable.

To understand how higher education laid the foundation for the radical Left’s takeover of the legal system, such that President Trump has been hounded and humiliated like no chief executive before, we must look to the rise of Critical Legal Studies at the nation’s leading law schools.

Triumph of the Crits

In the 1990s, when these trends were brewing, a law professor from rival Stanford commented that Harvard Law School, America’s oldest and most influential law school, was viewed as “the soul of the American ruling class.  Whoever wins the local institutional battles there thinks they will control America’s cultural and institutional destiny.”  The intellectual guerrilla warfare that took place during Obama’s time at Harvard set the stage for the bitter cultural battles that would engulf the nation decades later.

An outgrowth of the presumptuously named branch of philosophy known as postmodernism, Critical Legal Studies owes debts to Marxism and philosophers such as Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault.  The “Crits,” as these theorists became known, were devoted to sweeping aside the corrupt societal infrastructure built by so-called power groups—namely, white Christian males.  The Crits argued that the law should be used systematically to favor members of interest groups they believed had been historically wronged (racial minorities, women, gays) by discriminating against historically advantaged groups (whites, men, Christians).

The Crits strategically sought to build up cadres of supporters in academia.  Professors such as Roberto Unger found inspiration in the “liberation theology” that guided Marxist guerrilla movements in Latin America.  Another important figure was Professor Duncan Kennedy.  Nicknamed “Funky Dunc,” Kennedy was a tall man who cut a striking figure with his thinning hair, shaggy beard, and faded denim jacket.  He described communists, for example, as a “victim group,” and in fact “the most ‘like us’ of victim groups”—“us” meaning Crits.  One of his more peculiar proposals was the idea that law school professors and custodians should swap jobs from time to time.  One cheeky student went to the trouble of asking the janitors what they thought of the idea.  Their responses were priceless, including such gems as, “Maybe he can sell that line to a bunch of fruitcake students, but he sure can’t fool us janitors.”

The Crits of Harvard Law would become, in Kennedy’s memorable words, “guerrillas with tenure.”  They fought to admit more students with activist backgrounds and to hire more Crit professors.  They also urged the faithful to colonize other law schools to expand the empire.

When a white Southern student spoke in class—here I don’t exaggerate—a wave of smirks would go up among the students.  It was clear who, by political design, was the bottom of the social heap.

Students took their cues from the growing power of the Crits.  Student Crits enforced primitive speech codes in class.  Those few pupils who dared to express right-of-center comments were openly hissed at.  Professors never interceded on behalf of the harassed students, effectively condoning the behavior.

During my time as a student at Harvard Law School, the growth of Critical Legal Studies and the Marxist Left cast a pall over the institution.  I noticed a couple of things immediately.  When I spoke up in class in defense of conservative beliefs, other conservatives would seek me out and whisper encouragement after class.  But they wouldn’t defend those beliefs publicly.  Also, as a native of the Ozarks, I couldn’t help but see how Southern white men were treated.  When they spoke and their Southern accent filled the auditorium—here I don’t exaggerate—a derisive wave of smirks would go up among the students sitting behind them.  It was clear who, by political design, was the bottom of the social heap.

Critical Race Theory would become the most potent variation of Critical Legal Studies.  Recently National Public Radio noted, “Critical race theory is a legal framework developed decades ago at Harvard Law School.  It posits that racism is not just the product of individual bias, but is embedded in legal systems and policies. Today, it's become the subject of heated debate on Fox News and in local school board meetings across the country.”

Critical Race Theory took intellectual shape at Harvard while Obama was studying there.  This line of thought argued existing political and legal structures were tarred with racism.  One advocate of Critical Race Theory wrote in the Yale Law Journal in 1995 that black jurors are justified in engaging in racial jury nullification by refusing to convict black criminal defendants.  One observer explained the defense strategy of Johnnie Cochran, lead counsel in O.J. Simpson’s murder trial, was simply “applied critical race theory.”

The Atlantic observed that Harvard Law Professor Derrick Bell, a hero to young Obama and other leftists at the school, “is credited as the father of Critical Race Theory.”  In his book Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism, Bell branded whites as “members of the oppressor class.”  In a recorded incident later discovered and aired by Breitbart, Obama publicly hugged Bell at an event right before Obama’s graduation from Harvard.  This gesture, while considered politically controversial years later, was expected from the leader of black students at the time.  Bell repeatedly threatened to decamp from Harvard unless they gave in to his increasingly unreasonable demands for minority and leftist professors.

Trump and “Racist” Prosecutors

The election of Obama as President in 2008 and the succession of Vice President Joe Biden to the presidency cemented the dominance of Critical Race Theory and related ideologies in American life.  Obama was quick to argue racism was the bogeyman behind every wrong in America. This tactic dovetailed nicely with his divide-and-conquer political interests.

When Trump claims that the prosecutors tormenting him are “racist,” he is articulating an important truth in his own effective way.  Notable and troubling is the spectacle of a slate of Democratic prosecutors who are almost entirely African-American trying to subdue this forceful advocate of traditional Red State America through the blunt force of the criminal law.  Statistically speaking, such a thing is highly unusual, as relatively few elected district attorneys in America are African-American.  The dynamic is, at minimum, not helpful to the racial divisions that Democrats profess to worry about. 

Yet this sight also represents the perfect fulfillment of the Crits’ vision for a better America.  Law students of the past three decades have been taught to disdain people such as Trump, and by and large they do.  Now they run the country and kneecap those like Trump who challenge them.  The Crit dream of reverse discrimination, second-class citizenship and outright targeting of members of “oppressor groups” is becoming normal throughout the legal system.  The pending prosecutions of Trump across multiple jurisdictions, and the American people’s response to this despicable onslaught, will tell us how much of a republic we have left.