The Three Horsewomen of Trump's Apocalypse
Issue #370 OpEd August 21, 2023
Justice dressed in Black. All Black.
So remember in 1989 when Trump took out that full-page ad in New York papers demanding the death penalty for the five young Black men who later were referred to as the Central Park Five who were wrongly accused of brutally raping a young white woman jogger in Central Park? Remember when even though there was no evidence of that crime, he didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, and all five were eventually exonerated and it was proven that they were wrongfully convicted?
And remember how he refused to apologize? Because ‘so what’ if he helped fan the flames that destroyed the lives of five young African American men? They were Black, they were male, which meant if they weren’t guilty this time then they would be guilty the next time and were probably already guilty of something. Right? So Trump figures why apologize to ‘those people’?
I’m Trump. I’m white. I’m rich. They’re not.
So, granted this story of Trump’s mounting legal woes isn’t over yet, and a fair number of folk out there are still skeptical that Trump will ever truly pay the price for what he has been accused of once all is said and done.
This is mainly because he has never been forced to pay before, and because many simply cannot wrap their minds around the possibility that a rich white man who used to be President of the United States just might be convicted and serve time.
As for me, myself, and I? No way am I betting against three highly-educated Black women in charge of the law. Three highly educated Black women in charge of the law who are really pissed off. Oh I know you haven’t read that in any news story, and you won’t. And you don’t need to.
Just trust a brotha on this one.
Black Justice don’t play. And Donnie ‘bout to find that out…
From the United States District Court, District of Columbia:
District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan
Judge Tanya Chutkan was appointed to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in June 2014. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, she received her B.A. in Economics from George Washington University and her J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where she was an Associate Editor of the Law Review and a Legal Writing Fellow.
After law school, she worked in private practice for three years, then joined the District of Columbia Public Defender Service (“PDS”), where she worked as a trial attorney and supervisor. During her tenure at PDS, she argued several appellate cases and tried over 30 cases, including numerous serious felony matters. Eleven years later, she left PDS to join Boies, Schiller, & Flexner LLP, where she specialized in litigation and white collar criminal defense. During her 12 years at the firm, her clients included antitrust class action plaintiffs, as well as individual and corporate defendants involved in complex state and federal litigation.
From 1996 – 2000 Judge Chutkan was a member of the Steering Committee for the Criminal Law and Individual Rights Section of the District of Columbia Bar. She is a frequent lecturer on trial techniques and she has served as a faculty member at the Harvard Law School Trial Advocacy Workshop.
From Wikipedia:
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis
Willis was born in Inglewood, California. Her father was a member of the Black Panthers and a criminal defense attorney.[5] When Willis was in the first grade, her family moved to Washington, D.C. Her parents divorced, and her mother eventually moved back to California. Willis mostly stayed with her father.[1] Willis studied political science at Howard University, graduating cum laude in 1993, then moved to Atlanta[1] to attend Emory University School of Law, graduating in 1996 with a Juris Doctor.[4]
She spent 16 years as a prosecutor in the Fulton County district attorney's office. Her most prominent case was her prosecution of the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal. Willis, an assistant district attorney at the time, served as lead prosecutor in the 2014 to 2015 trial of twelve educators accused of correcting answers entered by students to inflate the scores of state administered standardized tests. Eleven of the twelve were convicted of racketeering under Georgia's RICO statute in April 2015.[6]
In 2018, she went into private practice.[7] That year, she ran for a seat on the Fulton County Superior Court, and lost.[8] In 2019, Willis became chief municipal judge for South Fulton, Georgia.[5]
In 2020, Willis was elected district attorney for Fulton County, defeating Paul Howard Jr., a six-term incumbent and her former boss.[9][10] In this role she is known for successfully using Georgia's RICO statute to prosecute non-mobsters[11], and is currently using the same statute to prosecute former president Donald Trump and 18 alleged co-conspirators[.
From the Office of the New York State Attorney General:
New York State Attorney General Letitia James
Letitia “Tish” James is the 67th Attorney General for the state of New York. With decades of experience and a long record of achievements, she is a powerful, effective attorney and lifelong public servant. When she was elected in 2018, she became the first woman of color to hold statewide office in New York and the first woman to be elected Attorney General.
In her first term, Attorney General James focused on protecting vulnerable New York residents and ensuring that individuals or companies that broke state laws were held accountable. She secured more than $7.5 billion for New York from those who broke state laws and took advantage of New Yorkers, including more than $2.5 billion from opioid manufacturers and distributors for their roles in the opioid epidemic. Under her leadership, the Office of the New York State Attorney General helped remove more than 4,000 guns from New York communities, took down dozens of dangerous drug and gun trafficking rings throughout the state, and took legal action to stop the proliferation of ghost guns.
Attorney General James took on predatory landlords who harassed tenants and endangered children by violating New York’s lead paint laws. She protected New Yorkers’ health and the state’s natural resources by going after polluters and companies that flouted environmental protection laws. Attorney General James stood up for vulnerable populations by going all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to stop a question about citizenship from being added to the census and successfully protecting DACA.
She has been a national leader in the fight to defend access to reproductive health care, leading dozens of legal actions across the country to protect and expand access to this lifesaving care. Attorney General James also stood up against corruption and took strong action against officials who broke New York laws or workplace protection measures, regardless of their status or political affiliation.
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