When my book (with Lawrence Stratton), The Tyranny of Good Intentions, was published, progressives and the left-wing refused to believe that the rich suffer frame-ups from prosecutorial abuse. Their response was that law is controlled by the rich and functions in their service. Only the poor and minorities suffer at the hands of the law.
The political left knew that Michael
Milken was guilty, because the rich "junk bond king" financed takeovers of
corporations that threw workers out of jobs. Leftists accepted the
Justice (sic)Department's fanciful claim that the Exxon Valdez oil spill was a
criminal act, not an accident for which civil damages were the remedy. Leona
Helmsley was guilty, because she was a rich b*tch. So was Martha Stewart. The
left-wing was firm: all rich white people in prison are guilty, and the only
reason they are in prison is that they are so obviously guilty that the system
couldn't let them off. In other words, they were so audacious in their crimes
that the crimes couldn't be covered up.
The same mentality now dominates
discussions of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case. Strauss-Kahn, who was at
the time of his highly publicized arrest the head of the International Monetary
Fund and the expected winner of the next French presidential election, was
arrested on sexual abuse and attempted rape charges on the word of an
immigrant hotel maid in New York.
Whereas the police are
required to respond to charges by questioning the accused, they are not supposed
to make a public spectacle of him in order to create the impression that he is
guilty before he is even charged. Yet DSK was arrested aboard an
airliner as it was about to depart for France and portrayed by the police
as a fleeing criminal. Photos were released of him in handcuffs and stripped of
his business attire.
The judge refused bail to
one of the West's most high-profile persons on the basis of the prosecutor's
statement that DSK would flee the country and hide out abroad. All of this
quickly was passed to reporters, who obliged the prosecutors and police by
portraying DSK as obviously guilty as he was apprehended fleeing from the
country.
The police even planted
the story that DSK was in such a hurry to flee that he left behind his cell
phone and that that is how they found him. This was a bald-faced lie. The fact
of the matter is that when DSK arrived at the airport, he discovered that he had
left his cell phone and called the hotel, the scene of the alleged crime, to ask
that it be retrieved and brought to him at the airport. When the police boarded
his flight, he asked them, "Did you bring my cell phone?" He had no idea the
police were there to detain him for questioning.
DSK's treatment raises
serious problems for the leftist myth that law serves the interests of the rich
and powerful. If law was the preserve of the rich and powerful, DSK would never
have been taken off a departing airliner and made a public spectacle on the
basis of an immigrant hotel maid's accusation. The airliner would have been
allowed to depart and the case would not have been pursued. If the maid's story
was ever reported, the police would have dismissed it as the story of a
hysterical person or a person out for money. In the unlikely case that the
police were pressed by reporters, the police would say that DSK had left the
country before they could find him and that they were arranging to question him
in France. At the very least, DSK's detention would have been very discreet, and
he would have been given the benefit of "innocent until proven guilty" and
granted bail.
Clearly, in DSK's case,
the law is not serving the rich and powerful. Moreover, there are powerful
biases against him. Feminists "know" that DSK is guilty, because "all men are
sexual predators." Progressives and leftists "know" that DSK is guilty, because
"as a person of wealth and power, he is used to getting away with
everything."
When it became known that
the police had "found" DSK only because the alleged fleeing suspect telephoned
the hotel and asked for his cell phone, leftists did not wonder why the police
had painted DSK guilty with a false story. Instead, they explained the alleged
criminal's revelation of his whereabouts on the basis of their myth that as one
of the rich and powerful, he expected to be able to rape women at will with
nothing ever done about it. Soon the story was that attempted rape was ordinary
behavior on DSK's part. But leftists did not explain why this time the law
failed to protect him from a hotel maid when it had protected him from higher
placed women.
As readers know by now, I
have little patience with those who let their emotions determine their
analysis. Let's look further at this case. It is a known fact that Sarkozy's
political operatives in France knew of Strauss-Kahn's arrest before it
was announced by the New York police. French, but not American, newspapers have
wondered how this could be.
Perhaps the hotel maid
thought to call up Sarkozy's people and tell them.
Note also that the alleged
victim has a very high-priced major league lawyer representing her that she not
only does not need but also obviously cannot afford to pay. It is not up to the
maid to prosecute the defendant. That job is done at public expense by the New
York attorney general. The alleged victim has another high-priced lawyer in
France whose job is to round up Strauss-Kahn victims among French women with the
prospect of sharing in a settlement.
These facts mean one of
two things: The "victim" is after money, not justice, and the lawyers are
operating on contingency with shares in a settlement between DSK and whatever
the collection of women turns out to be. Alternatively, Strauss-Kahn was set-up,
as he predicted that he would be, but there is no evidence other than a
disheveled woman performing for the hotel security camera. Therefore, whoever is
behind the set-up sent the fancy lawyer to the maid -- certainly the emigrant
maid would not have known how to find such a lawyer -- with the instructions to
drive the case toward settlement.
The public regards large
financial settlements as evidence of guilt, and thus a settlement is all that is
needed to terminate Strauss-Kahn's career. The left-wing would scream that money
again had defeated justice. As DSK has already been convicted in the media, he
no doubt would welcome a settlement rather than risk a trial by jurors
prejudiced by the media.
A settlement, of course,
has to be blamed on DSK, not on the maid or her attorneys. This is impossible to
do, because if the maid was not after a settlement, she would not have two
attorneys driving the case in that direction. How to pull this rabbit out of the
hat?
If CounterPunch's accounts
are correct, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz has stepped up to frame the
story. If a crime actually occurred, a settlement between the two sides' lawyers
would be obstruction of justice, itself a crime, and the lawyers know it. But
the maid's attorneys know that the big money belongs to DSK's wife, not to
DSK.
This rules out the maid
getting much out of a civil suit for damages following a felony conviction of
DSK. To get a settlement, the maid needs to get money from DSK's wife by
agreeing not to testify, thus collapsing a trial. The path to a settlement,
Dershowitz, says, is for DSK's lawyers not to negotiate with the maid or the
maid's lawyers, but with the maid's family as long as it is done outside of New
York and her home country of Guinea.
Notice that in
Dershowitz's explanation, it is DSK who initiates the settlement talks.
Dershowitz says that the maid's lawyer "may want to see justice done, but
ultimately, money is more important." If justice were the goal, the maid would
not need a lawyer.
So who is using the law
against who? In the event of a settlement, the left-wing will say that DSK or
his rich wife bought his way out of a crime. They will not consider the
possibility that the law served an immigrant maid who bilked a wife out of
millions of dollars and destroyed the reputation of a member of the
establishment who was in the way of those more powerful than
he.
The only way the
left-wing's myth about law being the servant of the rich can be saved is by
seeing the case as a set-up of DSK by someone who is richer and more powerful
than he is. This someone could be the current president of France and the
financial and political forces behind him, which includes the US government for
which Sarkozy has been a reliable puppet.
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