Trump. Avenatti. Tales Of Two Extortions. Wildly different in seriousness, & application of justice.
Avenatti extorted a sportswear mega-company for money. Nobody's life was at risk. Nobody died.
And here he goes off to a long term in prison.
Well and good.
But compare and contrast:
When Trump and Giuliani and their hired thugs and Cabinet members were extorting the democratic govenment of Ukraine, that nation's soldiers were -- and still are of course -- in the field fighting Putin's proxy and actual military forces. Ukrainian soldiers were dying in that war last spring and summer. And they continue dying, as Ukraine continues to fight for its very existence as a free nation instead of a client state of Moscow.
Trump was withholding for his own personal, corrupt political ends what would amount to 10% of Ukraine's military resources, WHILE this military conflict with Trump's mentor and puppetmaster's forces was actively underway.
The differences in the magnitude and significance between Avenatti's extortion and Trump's are off the charts.
The one (high on Trump's long enemies list, btw) who tried to wring money out of a corporate shoemaker is convicted and sentenced to prison for a long time.
The monstrous one of the two extortionsts, however, the one letting valiant men and women die as leverage in his crime, trying to smear his political opponent...
..is untouchable!
Untouchable by the American crimimal justice system as it exists in its embattled, undermined, obstructed, and finally hijacked condition today.
And Trump is, in practice, untouchable by any check or balance the Founders put in the Constitution to try to enable the country to defend itself against the very kind of demagoguery and authoritarianism Trump has brought.
Trump is untouchable for any of his crimes and abuses of power, Constitution be damned, because he's the Republican president, protected by his Republican attorney general, his Republican senate, and his Republican supreme court, all of which now prioritoze their party's one over-riding interest, of holding power, above any allegiance they may have ever felt towards the United States itself.
It doesn't bother me that Avenatti has been convicted of his extortion, so long as he received the verdict he deserved. (And I haven't looked at that closely.)
What IS wrong here, is the staggering difference in scale and harrm done by these two men's crimes of extortion. And that only the lesser criminal is being punished.
It is an outrage that threatens our democratic form of government itself that, as of 2020, America's DoJ and Senate both regard Trump as above any law that they're responsible to enforce. So he gets to go scot free and held accountable not at all for much, much worse extortion than Avenatti's. Extortion that costs Ukrainian lives.