Conservative radio host and litigator Mark Levin said Monday that the prosecutions of former President Donald Trump were like persecution of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish captain in the French army who was unjustly accused and convicted of espionage in 1894.
Dreyfus was blamed for leaking military secrets to Germany. He was tried, convicted, and exiled to distant Devil’s Island. When evidence of his innocence emerged, pointing to the real culprit, Dreyfus was prosecuted with new charges, instead of being freed.
The controversy provoked a wave of antisemitism in France, once thought of as being the most tolerant and enlightened country in Europe. The trials of Dreyfus also revealed the depth of hatred against Jews in French institutions, especially the military.
Dreyfus was eventually exonerated, after another conviction. But the “Dreyfus Affair” convinced a Jewish journalist, Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, that Jews had no future in Europe and needed a state of their own in the land of Israel.
Levin compared Trump to Dreyfus, noting that Trump had faced one investigation after another, even after he had been proven innocent, and that the government had targeted him with 78 charges thus far in an effort to silence him and marginalize him.
“He has to win every jury pool. He has to defend against every single charge in order to avoid prison time, should he not be elected president,” Levin observed of Trump. “This guy is almost like the American Dreyfus, if you want to know the truth.”
Levin continued: “You would not have dreamt, just a few years ago, that this could be happening to our country.”
Trump currently faces three trials: one in state court New York, for allegedly falsifying business records; one in federal court in Miami, for allegedly mishandling documents taken from the White House; and one in Washington, D.C., over the January 6 riot.
Later in the program, Levin interviewed journalist Julie Kelly, who noted that the protective orders sought by Special Counsel Jack Smith would not only limit Trump’s ability to campaign for president, but would hurt his ability to make his case in court.
“They are going out of their way to limit his ability to even see the evidence against him,” Kelly observed, noting Trump could not even see some of the evidence in the “documents” case.
requiring even regular discovery materials to be classified, to be dedicated as sensitive, so he can’t access them, they can’t post them in any hearings or motions of anything as this heads towards trial. They are making it impossible, not just to run for president, but more important, Mark, to defend himself, as any American citizen should be able to do. That’s how malicious, abusive, and retaliatory this Department of Justice is.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.