New York s Letitia James Has Got Her Man – WSJ

Regarding your editorial Letitia James Turns the Screws on Trump (March 19): Besides giving a new definition to the term victimless crime, this whole affair is leading toward a gross violation of the Eighth Amendment proscription against excessive fines and cruel and (certainly) unusual punishment. If Ms. James, the New York attorney general, moves to seize former President Donald Trump s assets and dispose of them in a fire sale, it would also be a violation of the Fifth Amendment.

This is all perilously close to being a bill of attainder of a type the Founders prohibited in the Constitution. Ms. James ran on the Lavrentiy Beria platform, saying she d get that man somehow, someway. Once elected, she searched until she stumbled on a law that could be applied creatively and uniquely, not unlike the other Trump cases in New York. Given the jurisdiction, she easily found a like-minded judge, and in direct contravention of all previous applications of the law and justice in general, she got her man.

All puffed up, the anti-Trumpers now celebrate. The long-lasting collateral damage to our system of laws, justice and fairness be damned.

Eric W. Zepp

Plano, Texas

via www.wsj.com

It would be amusing to see SCOTUS tangle with this. Seems to me an obvious violation of the 8th Amendment, as incorporated. Not holding my breath on law professors weighing in. Well, unless it’s to say it’s not a violation for reasons yet mysterious.