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Donald Trump is going to be sentenced to prison. It’s absurd, it’s unjust, and it’s another body blow to the idea that America is a free republic where dissent is not just tolerated, but welcomed, and any man can get justice, no matter the color of his skin, contents of his wallet, or nature of his political opinions. All that is dead now, or dying, and even though Trump is unlikely actually to serve time, the sentence is coming as inevitably as fall follows summer.

This is because Juan M. Merchan, that unassailable source of impartial justice, on Wednesday denied Trump’s third request that he recuse himself from the Stalinist show trial he is overseeing in Manhattan. Trump, convicted of thirty-four felonies that are misdemeanors when anyone else commits them, pointed out that Merchan, whose brazen unfairness and rabid partisanship have been obvious from the beginning of these proceedings, has ties to Kamala Harris. Merchan, however, dismisses these as “stale and unsubstantiated claims,” and that’s that. No one else’s opinion was solicited or necessary. And that means that in a few weeks, Trump’s prison sentence will come.

The sentencing is set to come on Sept. 18. Former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy points out that Sept. 18 is “two days after early voting in the 2024 election begins in Pennsylvania.” Merchan’s goal, according to McCarthy, is “to enable Vice President Harris and the media-Democratic complex to label Trump ‘a convicted felon sentenced to prison’ just weeks before Election Day, at a time when Americans will already have started voting in many states, not least the potentially decisive Pennsylvania battleground.” Hey, it’s easier than lining up the record of the Trump administration and the Biden regime and showing that it was a grand thing that Old Joe started pretending to be president on Jan. 20, 2021.

The whole idea is just to give the Harris campaign a powerful talking point when it’s crunch time. “The New York prosecution of Trump,” McCarthy points out, “was politics, not justice. That’s why we call it ‘lawfare.’ The prosecutors and judge are not concerned about whether convictions ultimately get thrown out on appeal.” It’s all just a stunt, put on from start to finish for political purposes.

And so Merchan will sentence Trump to prison. The former president doesn’t actually have to be apprehended and forced behind bars for the gambit to work. McCarthy explains, “And it’s not like Merchan is actually going to put Trump in prison; it is virtually certain that Trump will get bail pending appeal, so Merchan can appear to impose a stiff incarceration sentence without any real incarceration — at least for now, and probably ever.” We can hope for the sake of what remains of the concept of impartial justice in the United States that McCarthy is right about this, but many analysts were saying that Trump would never be subjected to the indignity of a mugshot as well. It is entirely possible, given the authoritarian bent of the Biden-Harris regime and its incandescent hatred for Trump, that he will indeed go to prison.

In fact, Trump behind bars may be the left’s last resort, short of another assassination attempt. They’ve tried framing him for crimes, including a bogus “insurrection.” They impeached him twice. They’ve convicted him in court on charges that were concocted to give them a pretext to say that a court had found him guilty of wrongdoing. The prison card could be the last one they’re holding.

If Trump were actually in prison, leftists could say that this convicted and imprisoned felon could not possibly become the nation’s Chief Executive. How could he carry out acts of state? Would he conduct affairs of state from a prison cell? Would visiting heads of state have to be escorted into a penitentiary in order to meet with the president of the United States? Why, it would make a mockery of the nation in the eyes of the world! Never mind that Old Joe Biden has been bumbling around on the global stage for three and a half years now, demonstrating the depth of his dementia and the endless credulity of a sizable segment of the American electorate. We’ll be told that as a prisoner, Trump cannot possibly serve as president. There would even be calls for the Republicans to replace him with someone acceptable to the political establishment — say, Nikki Haley.

And so Merchan, according to McCarthy, “admonished the parties to prepare for the court to move ahead with the imposition of sentence on Sept. 18.… If we may read the tea leaves, Merchan has already decided that he will deny Trump’s immunity motion. There is, moreover, a high likelihood that he will impose a prison sentence against Trump right after that.” And then watch for the calls that, in the name of supposedly impartial justice, the left’s Emmanuel Goldstein must serve his time behind bars.