Last week, the country’s main opposition leader was hit with a new prosecution that could see him serve an effective life sentence in prison.
The charges were vague, and political in nature. He was accused of inciting extremism and encouraging other people to break the law. He is being railroaded through a judicial system that is deferential to the government. He cannot appeal to public opinion in his own defense: the country’s media are hostile to him, and he has been censored on most platforms in any case.
The country in question was not the United States, but Russia. The opposition leader was not Donald Trump, but Aleksey Navalny. Yet increasingly, it is difficult to tell the difference between the two, at least when it comes to the administration of justice. The Biden administration has gone further than Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime: while Navalny has been given decades of prison time, the latest charges against Trump include a “civil rights” charge…
