So what do Donald J. Trump and Harold Ford Sr. have in common? Not political philosophy, that’s for sure. The longtime Memphis congressman and political broker, currently proprietor of the elegant Serenity funeral home, was a true-blue Democrat; the once and wannabe future president has apparently never had any discernible beliefs other than Trumpism, per se.
Yet, when pundits on one of Sunday’s TV talk shows went looking for an analogy to Trump’s current political predicament, Ford’s name surfaced. Once upon a time, the Memphis eminence, like the quadruply indicted squire of Mar-a-Lago, faced legal charges — though nothing like Trump’s 91 felony counts. This was in 1987, in the wake of the catastrophic collapse of United American, a Knoxville mega-bank owned by Jake Butcher, a onetime Democratic gubernatorial candidate, and his brother C.H.
In the fallout of that disaster, the two Butchers were indicted for bank fraud — specifically, for illegally switching cash reserves from branch to branch, a step ahead of bank examiners. The zealous feds of that era’s GOP-dominated Justice Department went looking for more game and settled on several associates of the Butchers, one of whom was Congressman Ford, a borrower and political ally, whom they hung a wire-fraud charge on, as well.
To get ahead of ourselves for a moment, none of the indicted Butcher friends would end up being convicted, though the banking brothers themselves did time. Guilt by association, thundered Ford, whose bank loans were deemed “pretend” affairs by the feds, and he was no mean thunderer when aroused. Therein lies the analogy to Trump, who at the moment is saddled with a gag order in connection with a New York civil trial involving alleged financial abuses in connection with his business empire.
In this case, as well as in regard to his other pending trials, Trump has vilified his courtroom adversaries — including the judge himself in the current trial — in every known vernacular way, attacking their motives, their politics, their morals, and their mental health, and imputing to them an enormous variety of personal perversities.
Hence the gag order, which Trump’s lawyers are currently appealing.
In his case, Ford was considerably more restrained, though he left no doubt he considered his predicament to have been inspired by considerations of both race and partisan politics. He, too, got a gag order which he, too — backed by House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Texas) and Majority Leader Thomas S. Foley (D-WA) — appealed.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals saw things Ford’s way and struck down the gag order, finding “The defendant, a Democrat, a black congressman who represents a largely black constituency in Memphis, is entitled to attack the alleged political motives of the Republican administration which he claims is persecuting him because of his political views and his race. One may strongly disagree with the political view he expresses but have no doubt that he has the right to express his outrage.”
Besides his MAGA-fans, Trump, too, has legal defenders here and there who argue for his right to express his misgivings, however untidily.
