They are trying to make representation of certain politically disfavored defendants a crime. From Michael Lesher at off-guardian.org:
The first thing we do,” says Dick the Butcher in Shakespeare’s early history play Henry VI, Part II – “let’s kill all the lawyers.”
In Shakespeare’s telling, Dick the Butcher is a notorious bully – and when he calls for the murder of lawyers he’s playing a leading role in a revolt against the legitimate king. So Justice John Paul Stevens probably got it right when, in a 1985 opinion, he interpreted the line as an indirect defense of the legal profession: “Shakespeare insightfully realized that disposing of lawyers is a step in the direction of a totalitarian form of government.”
Well, so it is; and Stevens also realized that you don’t actually have to “kill all the lawyers” in order to “dispose” of them – least of all when the bulk of the profession appears more than happy to dispose of itself.
But I doubt whether Stevens or anyone else anticipated the insouciance of the Georgia district-attorney-turned-totalitarian-activist who, by indicting Donald Trump and at least four of his lawyers on racketeering charges this month, has devised a breathtakingly simple way to make lawyers vanish: just send them to jail (along with their clients) for advocating a legal theory of which the Democratic Party disapproves.
And yes: that is the “racketeering” alleged in this so-called indictment. The felonies of which Trump and his associates stand accused in Fulton County, Georgia are the challenges they made to the results of the 2020 presidential election. No bribes, no hidden skullduggery, no usurpation of political office for private gain. No – the alleged “conspiracy” is all about Trump’s unsuccessful efforts to persuade officials that the election results were marred by irregularities and, as a result, should not be certified as a matter of law. That is all.
