As we muscle through the latest unwelcome societal cataract – this one, a series of criminal cases – it is worth reflecting on what it reveals about our two unwelcome presidential candidates. The cases are not the same, and the underlying conduct is (thankfully) beyond the experience of most of us.

Very few people defraud anyone, and even fewer cheat on their third wife with a prostitute.  Unlike Trump.

Most of our children are not drug addicts, don’t evade their taxes, and don’t sit in front of a porn site in their underwear or on a company board in an industry about which they know nothing. Unlike Hunter Biden.

But this is not about Hunter Biden, the man. It is about the Hunter Biden trial that Joe Biden’s political enemies want to portray as instead being about him. Which gives us a baseline for comparison. That is, how have Joe Biden and Trump handled their respective trials?

We know Donald’s approach. Much as you may want to, you cannot miss it. There is an argument to be made that the hush money case has a political component – although Trump is too stupid to make it. It does not rest on Trump’s bad acts, which are obvious.  Rather, it is the notion that if what Trump did was so serious, why did the DA wait so long? Unless the decision to prosecute was in response to a candidacy that would not die. That possibility does not speak at all to Trump’s misconduct. But it may well speak to Bragg’s motive.

As for Joe Biden? He has no control over Bragg, who does not work for Biden. But DOJ does work for the President. Joe Biden did not initiate DOJ’s investigation of his son. Trump did. But Biden did not kill it, nor did he obviously intervene (as evidenced by the upgrading of charges). What would Trump do to protect his children in this situation? You do not need me to tell you. You already know the answer.

There you have it. Joe Biden lets (what must be the agonizing) wheels of justice proceed against a beloved, deeply compromised son. Trump tries to blow up our judicial system because it disadvantages him.

As for “lawfare,” consider this. Trump loses every case that tests his endless deliberate misrepresentations (you’re right – that is another way of saying his lies), because they are so paper thin that they cannot withstand the slightest scrutiny.  They only fly where there is no scrutiny whatsoever; that is, with his core base. Simply stated, Trump’s response to “lawfare” is “liefare.”

And against whom is that liefare now directed? Remember, folks, the sexual assault verdict was rendered by a jury. The criminal convictions were rendered by a jury. Not “crooked Joe Biden.”  Not the “fake news.”  Not a “weaponized DOJ.” Not a “rogue” judge. A jury.

Having prosecuted criminal cases before juries, this is what I know to be true about them.  Jurors are not frontrunning, opportunistic political elites.  They are the people you shop next to in the supermarket and flash your brights at in the left lane of the NJ Turnpike. The casual strangers that sit next to you at school meetings and complain to (and with) you about inflation. With bills to pay, marriages to navigate, children to raise, jobs to keep, and lives to live. Regular people, including (in this most recent Trump case) some open Trump supporters. That is, people like you and me who, when pulled out of their regular lives and onto a jury, take that uniquely important role very seriously.  Just as we would take it very seriously.

So, when Trump lies about corrupt, sham, made up jury verdicts, remember this. He is not lying about “them.”  He is lying about the jurors.  He is lying about you. Which closes the circle on Trump’s biggest lie of all. The lie that he is a man of the people.