As sometimes happens, two seemingly unrelated news stories get reported on the same day, yet when taken together they are revealed to have a lot in common. That’s what happened last week when we finally got to see Jack Smith’s report on his derailed prosecution of Donald Trump, while concurrently we learned about a Forsyth County official who committed a new crime by hiding an old one. The two stories tell us a lot about what’s wrong with our political and judicial systems on every level. I’ll start with the Smith/Trump saga.
Donald Trump has been in and out of court so often that it’s hard to keep track of his convictions, which include one for defaming a woman he allegedly raped, and 34 felony counts relating to a hush-money scheme. Trump also had some near misses in New York and Georgia (for bank fraud and election interference respectively) when those cases were dropped after the Supreme Court granted him presidential immunity for anything and everything he’s ever done or ever will do. Had those cases not been delayed for various reasons, Trump would have been serving prison time before the high court even got involved. And that brings me to special prosecutor Jack Smith whose rock-solid case against Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election was also derailed by the court’s immunity ruling.
Last week Attorney General Merrick Garland released Smith’s scathing 130-page report which detailed Trump’s criminal activities. Smith wrote, “When it became clear that Mr. Trump had lost the [2020] election and that lawful means of challenging the election results had failed, he resorted to a series of criminal efforts to retain power.” The report, which Trump did not want made public, made it clear that had the case gone to trial, he would have been convicted and on his way to the slammer. Critics of the judicial system like to say, “If it had been any other person who committed all those crimes, that person would be doing hard time.” The fact that Trump has set a new standard for avoiding punishment of any kind brings me to another political story that unfolded last week involving a Triad area agency.
The Forsyth County Soil and Water Conservation Board is an agency that doesn’t get a lot of attention, but they do important work. Board members assist property owners with “conserving soil and water and other natural resources.” They also offer technical and financial assistance to individuals, schools, and corporations on soil and water-related matters. Sadly, we don’t hear much about all of the great things they do, but as of last week, we’re hearing a lot about something its newest member didn’t do.
Edward Jones was elected to the board last November by 63% of the 93,000 Forsyth County residents who voted. According to the Winston-Salem Journal, prior to the election Jones was forthcoming about a lot of things including that he had been shot 37 times, and about his faith in God and his career as a rapper. But Jones neglected to reveal that he was a convicted sex offender, something that he apparently never disclosed to anyone outside of the state of New Jersey where his crimes had been committed. The problem is that North Carolina General Statute 163-106 requires anyone running for elected office to fill out a “Notice of Candidacy” form and to disclose any prior felony convictions on that form.
Thanks to reporting by the Journal’s Scott Sexton we now know about Jones’ failure to disclose his felony conviction, which in itself is a Class I felony. We also know that Jones will probably escape punishment and remain in office because no one seems to know exactly how to make him accountable for his most recent crime. For example, the State Board of Elections says there’s nothing it can do because the election results have already been certified.
One SBE official told Sexton, “You would need to contact the Forsyth Soil and Water Conservation Commission regarding this matter. Since the candidate is already serving in this office, this is not an election-related matter.” But Forsyth elections chief Tim Tsuji contradicts that assessment, saying the matter, “is in the hands of the State Board of Elections.”
Meanwhile, George Teague, a past chairman of the State Soil and Water Commission says that the Forsyth Soil and Water Board can only remove Jones if he stops showing up for meetings or is found to have committed some wrong-doing in carrying out his duties. In other words, there’s no one willing to prosecute Jones because he’s already been elected. Call it a kind of convoluted immunity, sort of like what Donald Trump has used to escape punishment for his crimes.
Is it any wonder, then, that most voters have become apathetic about political criminals? We’ve gotten used to elected officials breaking the law in part because they’re rarely held accountable for the laws they broke. And if they’re not punished that must mean they were wrongly accused. As a result, men like Trump and Jones become victims rather than convicts, and our elections continue to be polluted by men who think laws only apply to other people.
January 21, 2025 @ 10:57 pm
Soiled Elections
As sometimes happens, two seemingly unrelated news stories get reported on the same day, yet when taken together they are revealed to have a lot in common. That’s what happened last week when we finally got to see Jack Smith’s report on his derailed prosecution of Donald Trump, while concurrently we learned about a Forsyth County official who committed a new crime by hiding an old one. The two stories tell us a lot about what’s wrong with our political and judicial systems on every level. I’ll start with the Smith/Trump saga.
Donald Trump has been in and out of court so often that it’s hard to keep track of his convictions, which include one for defaming a woman he allegedly raped, and 34 felony counts relating to a hush-money scheme. Trump also had some near misses in New York and Georgia (for bank fraud and election interference respectively) when those cases were dropped after the Supreme Court granted him presidential immunity for anything and everything he’s ever done or ever will do. Had those cases not been delayed for various reasons, Trump would have been serving prison time before the high court even got involved. And that brings me to special prosecutor Jack Smith whose rock-solid case against Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election was also derailed by the court’s immunity ruling.
Last week Attorney General Merrick Garland released Smith’s scathing 130-page report which detailed Trump’s criminal activities. Smith wrote, “When it became clear that Mr. Trump had lost the [2020] election and that lawful means of challenging the election results had failed, he resorted to a series of criminal efforts to retain power.” The report, which Trump did not want made public, made it clear that had the case gone to trial, he would have been convicted and on his way to the slammer. Critics of the judicial system like to say, “If it had been any other person who committed all those crimes, that person would be doing hard time.” The fact that Trump has set a new standard for avoiding punishment of any kind brings me to another political story that unfolded last week involving a Triad area agency.
The Forsyth County Soil and Water Conservation Board is an agency that doesn’t get a lot of attention, but they do important work. Board members assist property owners with “conserving soil and water and other natural resources.” They also offer technical and financial assistance to individuals, schools, and corporations on soil and water-related matters. Sadly, we don’t hear much about all of the great things they do, but as of last week, we’re hearing a lot about something its newest member didn’t do.
Edward Jones was elected to the board last November by 63% of the 93,000 Forsyth County residents who voted. According to the Winston-Salem Journal, prior to the election Jones was forthcoming about a lot of things including that he had been shot 37 times, and about his faith in God and his career as a rapper. But Jones neglected to reveal that he was a convicted sex offender, something that he apparently never disclosed to anyone outside of the state of New Jersey where his crimes had been committed. The problem is that North Carolina General Statute 163-106 requires anyone running for elected office to fill out a “Notice of Candidacy” form and to disclose any prior felony convictions on that form.
Thanks to reporting by the Journal’s Scott Sexton we now know about Jones’ failure to disclose his felony conviction, which in itself is a Class I felony. We also know that Jones will probably escape punishment and remain in office because no one seems to know exactly how to make him accountable for his most recent crime. For example, the State Board of Elections says there’s nothing it can do because the election results have already been certified.
One SBE official told Sexton, “You would need to contact the Forsyth Soil and Water Conservation Commission regarding this matter. Since the candidate is already serving in this office, this is not an election-related matter.” But Forsyth elections chief Tim Tsuji contradicts that assessment, saying the matter, “is in the hands of the State Board of Elections.”
Meanwhile, George Teague, a past chairman of the State Soil and Water Commission says that the Forsyth Soil and Water Board can only remove Jones if he stops showing up for meetings or is found to have committed some wrong-doing in carrying out his duties. In other words, there’s no one willing to prosecute Jones because he’s already been elected. Call it a kind of convoluted immunity, sort of like what Donald Trump has used to escape punishment for his crimes.
Is it any wonder, then, that most voters have become apathetic about political criminals? We’ve gotten used to elected officials breaking the law in part because they’re rarely held accountable for the laws they broke. And if they’re not punished that must mean they were wrongly accused. As a result, men like Trump and Jones become victims rather than convicts, and our elections continue to be polluted by men who think laws only apply to other people.