“Show me the man,” Lavrentiy Beria notoriously boasted (which David quoted earlier), “and I’ll show you the crime.” As Stalin’s hatchet man for a dozen years in the Soviet Union, Beria had plenty of opportunities to put those words into action. To be fair, it was the same operating philosophy used by his Soviet predecessors and successors, too — only not so well put, and maybe never so efficiently used as a raw exercise of power.
Is that what happened in Manhattan yesterday? Did Alvin Bragg fulfill his campaign promise to “get Donald Trump” and craft the crime to fit the man? My good friend Scott Johnson at Power Line certainly sees it that way, only without the Stalinist touches of confessions in court and the tearful — if futile — profession of the faith of the prosecutors. Scott places most of the blame on Judge Juan Merchan:
It would have been more efficient — it would…
