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The unprecedented indictment, arrest, and arraignment of former President and current 2024 contender Donald Trump is giving me disturbing flashbacks to my birthplace, Soviet Russia, which I fled in search of freedom and justice. Growing up during the Cold War, when the bushy-eyed Leonid Brezhnev ruled the USSR, It was understood that the head of the Communist Party, the one and only political party in existence under the totalitarian form of government, would rule for life. Free elections were not a thing. It was something we heard about on Voice of America or Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which the Soviet government jammed from being broadcasted in the USSR, and it sounded fascinating. The idea of two or more candidates competing for the highest office to rule the land and its people seemed perfect.
The minute I became a U.S. citizen, I proudly cast my first vote—for Bill Clinton, I must admit. Bill was charming, spoke with passion, seemed to defend the common folk in America. I hadn't yet learned that some American politicians were not much different from Soviet politicians; they wanted power and would do anything to get it.
Since then, as most Americans do, I have taken the idea of free elections for granted: a plurality of opinions, a variety of candidates. Of course, I thought, the American people make their choice and cast their vote for whomever they believe is the best candidate for the highest position in the world, the leader of the United States of America!
It was not until I saw the stern face of President Trump, leaving Manhattan Criminal Court that I realized that my adopted homeland is on the verge of a transformation, being infected with the virus of totalitarianism.
It doesn't matter if you love Trump or hate him. The idea that the law enforcement apparatus of the ruling party would zealously pursue and deploy dubious criminal charges against a former U.S. president who is the leading candidate for the opposing party's presidential nomination and the likely opponent of the sitting president should be a grave concern for any American.
For someone who was the subject of a totalitarian regime and a one-party system, this is clear election interference, a subversion of the democratic electoral process, and un-American.
What is deeply ironic is that the Democrats are using the very toolbox that the Soviet government did when it suppressed any sort of dissent against its despotic Communist regime to ensure its rule in perpetuity. The tactics remind me of what Russian President and former KGB operative Vladimir Putin has deployed against his vocal critics and political opponents, to ensure his deadly grip on power for almost 20 years.
Consider Putin's actions against Alexei Navalny, who has led a political movement since the late 2000s aimed at challenging Putin and the pro-Kremlin party, United Russia. In 2014, Navalny was convicted based on fabricated charges of embezzlement, receiving a three-and-a-half-year jail term in a conviction that the European Court of Human Rights condemned. Released unexpectedly, he started leading nationwide protests advocating for the defeat of Putin's "party of power," which he called the party of "crooks and thieves." But he was banned from challenging Putin in the 2018 elections because of his fraud conviction. In February 2022, he was jailed for violating the terms of a 2014 suspended sentence for fraud, in a case that was based on failure to report regularly to police during 2020. Navalny remains in jail to this day.
He is gravely ill and is denied basic medicine by the prison guards. Russian law enforcement continues to punish Navalny by placing him in a cramped punishment cell for ridiculous offenses such as washing his face at the wrong time or failing to button up his prison uniform.
The extraordinary, first of its kind indictment of former president Trump appears to be for low-level misdemeanor offenses questionably elevated into felonies related to falsifying business records in 2016 to conceal payments to two alleged mistresses in exchange for non-disclosure agreements. The arrest of a former president and presumptive GOP nominee based on dubious charge by District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who during his Democratic Primary campaign for his office vowed to go after Trump, is a clear case of political persecution, Soviet style. It sets an extremely dangerous precedent that both political parties could now use to weaponize the justice system against their political opponents.
Americans get mad when they hear from the U.S. intelligence community that foreign adversaries like Russia and China attempt to interfere in our presidential elections. They should think about how to stop political elites from interfering in the bedrock of American democracy.
Donald Trump is detested and feared by Democrats, and many Republicans too. But unlike in Russia, where the outcome of elections is pre-determined, it is the people's choice about whether to elect him—not Alvin Bragg's.
Putin must very proud that the Democrats are borrowing a page out of his playbook to destroy Joe Biden's top political opponent, while subverting democracy and destabilizing the country.
Rebekah Koffler is the president of Doctrine & Strategy Consulting, a former DIA intelligence officer, and the author of "Putin's Playbook: Russia's Secret Plan to Defeat America." She also wrote the foreword for "Zelensky: The Unlikely Ukrainian Hero Who Defied Putin and United the World."
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
