OPINION:
There’s another global pandemic brewing, and it’s not an airborne virus from China. This time, it’s lawfare — the legal abuse of political opponents through the use of weaponized prosecutions, fake crimes and rigged courts.
This virus wasn’t cooked up in a Wuhan lab. Washington politicians created it. And no one understands this better than President Trump. The same government tactics weaponized by Democrats to “get Trump” are now being used against populist leaders elsewhere, particularly in Brazil and Bosnia. These tactics are aimed at sending former President Jair Bolsonaro to prison and at jailing and disqualifying from holding office the duly-elected Bosnian Serb president, Milorad Dodik.
We are living in an era in which the very existence of self-government and democracy is threatened. Day by day, we see new declassified documents that prove more and more that President Obama and national security insiders colluded with the Hillary Clinton campaign to create the illegal Russia collusion hoax to destroy the first Trump presidency.
Now, 5000 miles away, unelected European bureaucrats sharing the same nation-building agenda as the Biden and Obama administrations are using kangaroo courts to drive President Dodik from office.
This lawfare virus, which has been running amok in Washington for a decade, is now spreading globally. In Brazil, Mr. Bolsonaro is under house arrest, standing trial on trumped-up charges brought by notorious Supreme Court Justice Alexander de Moraes. Although massively popular, Mr. Bolsonaro could face imprisonment for up to 40 years and be barred from running for public office.
And in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Mr. Dodik, the “Balkan Bolsonaro,” is being pushed out of office by an illegally appointed German high representative, in the same way a colonizer bullies his subjects. Mr. Dodik’s offense? He refused to comply with an order from the foreign overseer to cancel a day honoring a sacred Christian saint and celebrating a day of ethnic pride because the high representative claimed that doing so was offensive to the Muslim majority in Bosnia.
As one sinister, unelected judge in Brazil persecutes the Brazilian president, European Union bureaucrats want to put the pro-Trump Mr. Dodik in prison for standing up for the rights of his people. These political persecutions would be more shocking if America hadn’t just endured the same corrupt schemes undertaken to remove Mr. Trump from office.
Fortunately, in America, the attempted Democratic Party coup against Mr. Trump failed, and now the culprits are in the spotlight. The preservation of our democracy and the right of a free people to choose their leaders in elections free and fair demands that they face justice and real accountability. Mr. Trump’s administration is committed to doing this. Similarly, Mr. Trump has taken a firm stance with sanctions and tariffs in Brazil to end the tyranny of the weaponized Judge Moraes.
However, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a place to which few Americans give any thought, the conspirators may pull it off, lighting the fuse on an unpredictable chain of events in a part of the world where twice in the past century wars have been ignited.
This is a pattern. From the Beltway to Brazil to Bosnia, the lawfare template is clear: When popular leaders resist globalist interests and win elections the establishment cannot control, they are declared criminals. Not by voters, but by politically weaponized courts. The goal is never justice; it is always to undermine and eliminate self-government and the autonomy of the people.
And it all comes out of the same playbook. Step one, label these right-of-center leaders Russian sympathizers and acolytes of Russian President Vladimir Putin and paint legal routine practices as “corrupt.” Step two, use the establishment media to push fake narratives such as “Russian collusion,” “threat to democracy” or “pro-Russian separatists.”
Had Messrs. Trump, Dodik or Bolsonaro been weak, unpopular or irrelevant, there would be no need for such tactics. However, all three have a strong political base. And because they are anti-establishment, conservative populist leaders who are popular with the people who elected them, the abuse of the rule of law has become a tool used to thwart them rather than the bedrock principle that protects democracy.
This is precisely the point made by Vice President J.D. Vance in a speech he gave in Munich in February. Mr. Vance accused European elites of employing Soviet-era tactics to silence alternative viewpoints and take down democratically elected leaders. And late last week, the neighboring pro-Trump Hungarian President Viktor Orban posted on X: “It’s time for everyone to respect the decision of the people of Republika Srpska, who elected Milorad Dodik. There is no place for legal witch hunts in a democracy.”
America cannot be the policeman of the world, but it does have a loud voice that is heard worldwide. It is in America’s national interest to express support for leaders like Messrs. Bolsonaro and Dodik and to speak out against lawfare wherever it undermines the will of the people.
• Rod Blagojevich served as governor of Illinois from 2003 to 2009. In February, he was pardoned by President Trump for his conviction on corruption charges.
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