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Most Americans understand that justice is not blind, as they have always been told by those who administer it. Whatever injustices people have faced at the hands of the legal system, however, the United States has – for the most part – been a country in which people are not unjustly persecuted for their political affiliations.

Even after the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice deftly maneuvered around many of their own rules and protocols to ensure that Hillary Clinton and her associates completely escaped accountability over the email scandal, three men with connections to President Donald Trump have been relentlessly pursued by those same agencies.

Cruel and Unusual Punishment for Paul Manafort

One of those men, in particular, has become the victim of banana republic tactics employed by government bureaucrats with a political axe to grind. Paul Manafort is certainly no saint but he currently sits in solitary confinement – even though he has yet to go on trial – as if he were the nation’s most prolific serial killer.

Manafort is, without a doubt, a wheeler and dealer and has been charged with financial crimes. He was released to house arrest not long after facing the charges but then was re-arrested for alleged witness tampering. Now – bizarrely citing concerns for Manafort’s safety – the authorities have placed him in solitary confinement and he languishes in a jail cell for 23 hours per day.

Did Mueller’s Mob Threaten Michael Flynn?

After pleading guilty to making false statements to the FBI, General Michael Flynn has still not been sentenced. That, in itself, is a chilling fact; Flynn is obviously co-operating on some level with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s mob or – as it is also known – his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Two things about Flynn’s case are obvious. First, that he was clearly coerced into pleading guilty since even the FBI agents who interviewed him stated that they had detected no deliberate attempt, on Flynn’s part, to deceive them. Secondly, Flynn’s sentencing has now been delayed for the third time. The inescapable conclusion is that Mueller is holding Flynn’s sentence over him like a threat. His eventual punishment will be determined by how juicy the information he gives Mueller turns out to be.

The Farcical But Sinister Pursuit of Carter Page

Carter Page – a man who, at times, seems barely capable of tying his own shoelaces – has also been hounded as though he were a Russian James Bond scheming to topple the United States. He has still not been charged with any crime but the FBI, the DOJ, and Mueller have practically destroyed his life.

Though Carter Page is innocent of any crime and though Michael Flynn is also probably innocent and pleaded guilty only after being threatened with far worse consequences than he now faces, Paul Manafort may well be guilty of bank fraud. All three men, however, have been confronted with an unrelenting standard of criminal justice imposed by unelected government officials who, it appears obvious, see these men as nothing more than potential sources of information that can be used to topple a sitting United States president. In the meantime, it matters not that their lives, reputations, and financial futures are laid waste.

What happened to constitutional rights? What happened to due process and to the right to a speedy trial? One cannot help but speculate that rogue political actors such as Robert Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein would behave less like tinpot dictators if the enduring symbol of justice – the scale – were replaced with a pitchfork.