Trump was not the only North American national leader who got raked over the coals at a legislative hearing yesterday. Something similar happened to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose own former attorney general, Jody Wilson-Raybould yesterday testified that he tried to improperly interfere in the prosecution of a politically connected corporation (to get her to lay off the firm in order to improve the Liberal Party's electoral prospects).
A few thoughts on this:
What Trudeau likely did here is something that Trump does all the time - and out in the open. He constantly tries to skew investigations and prosecutions for political reasons. Recall, for example, his statement last year that the Dept of Justice should drop two prosecutions of GOP congressmen who were accused of corruption, so as to help them get reelected.
While Trudeau's sins are, overall, less egregious than those of Trump, it seems likely he will take more political damage because 1) he was much more popular to begin with, and 2) he had a cleaner image than Trump previously. In recent weeks, polls have shifted against Trudeau's Liberal Party, and it is now considerably more likely they will lose the upcoming election to the opposition Conservatives.
Wilson-Raybould made an important distinction in her testimony: It is permissible to exercise prosecutorial discretion on policy or moral reasons, but NOT based on the political affiliation of the defendants, of whether going after them will help a party's electoral prospects. The former is unavoidable in any legal system where we can only go after a small fraction of offenders (which does not mean it's completely un-problematic). The latter leads down a dark path where lawbreakers are treated differently depending on whether they are opponents or supporters of the ruling party, or on how popular they are with crucial swing voters.
The suggestion above that Trudeau is less bad than Trump should NOT be interpreted as a defence of the former. What he likely did was still wrong. Trump sets such a low standard that being less awful than him is no great achievement.
NOTE: the link above is an article in MacLean's, a leading Canadian political magazine.
Corporations are too big to fail it's business as usual. The Conservatives would have done the exact same thing.
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