Money and power paper over every sin

Paul Manafort was recently sentenced for one batch of crimes. The sentence for another batch will come soon. In this first batch the prosecution asked for 19-25 years in jail. The judge gave him four. That prompted Jasmin Mujanovic to tweet:

The Manafort sentence should be further proof that the Mueller probe & its accompanying activities will not “save” constitutional & democratic governance in the US. Only the will of elected officials & civil society mobilization can ensure that (cf. South Korea).

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos, in a post written before the Manafort sentencing, explains justice as it relates to the nasty guy and his cronies.

The real revelation of the investigations into Trump and his foreign connections isn’t even that the man occupying the White House is a crook, and the man who ran the Republican convention three times and acted as an adviser to a half-dozen presidents is a crook, and so is his partner, and so is *his* partner, and so are they all. The real revelation is that *it took a special counsel* to see any of these men face serious prosecution no matter what they did, or how often they did it, or how “bold” their crimes might be.

That being a “winner” in America appears to be synonymous with being not just a crook, but a monster, isn’t exactly a new theory, but we’ve been reminded of it via the day-by-day results of the investigation into Trump. Threats, abuse, bribery, lies, extortion, and above all the blatant assumption that money and power will paper over any sin aren’t the exception for men like Trump and company. They’re the air they breathe.
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The shocking thing to them is not that crimes were being committed, or are being committed. The shocking thing is that anyone, anywhere, is getting in the way.

What Trump knows, and what should be the most sobering discovery to emerge from the entire investigation, is that, barring the extraordinary circumstances of a special counsel or someone with similar authority, men like him will not face justice for crimes. And in fact, they will go on lying, cheating, stealing, with impunity.
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What the special counsel investigation has revealed is that there’s not one justice system in America, or even two. For those with enough money and power, there’s no justice at all.