From Russia With Doom: 'Institutional Homicide' Chills Global Spine

Navalny Nixed in Arctic Prison Plunge, Sparks Lawfare Lore in U.S. Political Fray

Alexei Navalny [r] is dead. He was Russian President Vladimir Putin’s [l] fiercest political rival and spent the last three years in an Arctic penal colony.

By Richard Luthmann

Earlier today, Russia’s Alexei Navalny, the nation's most vocal critic of President Vladimir Putin, met a mysterious end. The 47-year-old opposition leader’s demise on Friday in the Arctic IK-3 penal colony, over 1,200 miles from Moscow, has jolted the global community.

According to the Federal Penitentiary Service of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District, Navalny "felt unwell" after a walk, lost consciousness, and succumbed despite immediate medical intervention. The exact cause of death remains under wraps.

Navalny's fearless return to Russia in 2021, after recuperating from a nerve agent attack in Germany, had cemented his status as a martyr for Russian democracy. The Kremlin has denied allegations of its involvement in his poisoning, leaving the international community pondering the lengths to which Putin's regime will go to silence dissent.

Across the Atlantic, some claim a parallel battle rages. Legal wrangling, political maneuvering, and weaponized justice have former President Donald Trump in the crosshairs. Dubbed "lawfare," this strategy is multifaceted. In tandem with a slew of politically motivated civil and criminal prosecutions, attempts in states like Colorado and Maine to bar Trump from ballots are raising eyebrows and constitutional questions alike. The plan aims to disqualify, subvert, and bankrupt Trump and anyone who would have the temerity to stand with him.

Lawfare risks turning the Supreme Court into an arena where political scores are settled.

The apt question is whether the phraseology, “For my friends anything; for my enemies, The Law,” is more aptly applied to the apartments in the Kremlin or the chambers of power in Washington, D.C.

Trump's legal battles and the Democratic Party's push to thwart his 2024 ambitions draw eerie parallels to Navalny's plight. Critics argue that the "lawfare" against Trump mirrors the Kremlin’s tactics — not by poison but through legal loopholes, expensive and time-consuming litigious practices, and electoral engineering. The aim? To sideline a formidable political adversary without directly confronting him in the electoral arena.

This campaign against Trump not only seeks to hinder him politically but seeks to place him in chains - like Navalny. The ruling Democratic Party administration employs the Department of “Justice” as its henchman and the judiciary as its battleground.

Are Biden’s designs on Trump Putineseque?

The unfolding drama questions the integrity of democratic processes, with the U.S. Supreme Court poised as the ultimate arbiter in Trump’s ballot access and criminal sagas. As Democrats lay a legal labyrinth to entrap Trump, the specter of Navalny’s fate looms large, igniting fears of "institutional homicide" — a term chillingly relevant in both Moscow and Washington.

Three years ago, when Navalny returned to his homeland from exile in Germany, he knew he would face legal opposition. But the consensus was that Putin could see a hair on his chief rival’s head harmed without facing dire political consequences of martyrdom. Geopolitical changes in focus have made Navalny a footnote, and the Kremlin will absorb his tragic death.

Will Donald Trump face a fate worse than a gulag in an American prison? Just days ago, the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General issued a scathing report detailing extreme staffing shortages, policy violations, and systemic operational failures that contributed to hundreds of likely preventable inmate deaths across the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) system between 2014 and 2021.

America doesn't have control over its own prisons, and BOP Director Collette S. Peters recently admitted as much within the past week. Will Donald Trump go to federal prison and meet the same fate as Alexei Navalny, where a cough can quickly turn into a coronary? The shadow of Navalny's death extends beyond the icy tundra of the Arctic, casting a pall over American democracy and only deepening the dread of what political vendettas could engender for the 45th President of the United States.

What do you think?

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