One state prosecutor and one private plaintiff have already won huge fines and damages from former President Donald Trump, which could exceed $500 million, including legal fees.

President Trump faces additional civil and criminal charges in three other federal, state and local indictments.

These five cases, involving plaintiff E. Jean Carroll, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, New York State Attorney General Letitia James, special federal prosecutor Jack Smith, and Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis, have an eerie commonality. There is a point.

First, they are either unapologetically left-wing or associated with liberal causes. They filed legal writs in America's big left-wing cities like Atlanta, New York, and Washington, where liberal judges and juries predominate in a way that is uncharacteristic of the country as a whole.

The second is that it is overtly political. Mr. Bragg, Mr. James and Mr. Willis campaigned and raised money by promising to win or defeat Mr. Trump.

Carroll's lawsuit was funded by left-wing billionaire Reid Hoffman.

Mr. Smith appealed for an expedited court schedule in hopes of putting Mr. Trump on trial before the November election.

Third, if Trump hadn't run for president or been a conservative, none of this would have happened.

Carroll's lawsuit circumvented the statute of limitations by prompting the intervention of left-leaning New York state legislators. He passed a special bill that waived the decades-old statute of limitations for sexual assault lawsuits for one year.

Until President Trump took office, New York prosecutors like Mr. James used real estate assets to obtain loans that were approved by bank auditors, repaid in full on time, and earned significant interest to the lending institutions. The company has never filed a civil lawsuit against a company for allegedly overestimating its value. .

In a desperate effort to find something in Trump, Mr. Bragg even fabricated Mr. Trump's personal non-disclosure agreement into a federal campaign violation.

Smith has also accused Trump of insurrection. But Trump has never before been charged with, much less convicted of, any sedition charge.

Willis struggled to find a way to criminalize Trump's complaints about losing Georgia in the 2020 national election. She eventually came up with the racketeering charge, which usually applies to mafias and drug cartels.

Fourth, in all of these cases, the charges could apply to left-wing public figures and officials as well.

President Joe Biden, like President Trump, was accused of sexual assault by former staffer Tara Reade decades ago. However, Ms. Reed was torn apart by the media and leftists over the discrepancies in her memory. By contrast, the wildly inconsistent and amnesiac Carroll earned $83 million from Trump.

Mr. Smith set a precedent for accusing Mr. Trump of illegally taking classified files into his private residence.

However, the government did not at the same time indict Biden on similar charges. But Biden had been deleting the files for over 30 years, not his two years, and he had kept the files in multiple locations instead of one.

His rickety garage was a mess and not a secure family compound like Trump's mansion. Moreover, Biden did so while a senator and vice president without executive authority to declassify nearly any presidential document he desired.

Mr. Biden did not come forward and report the crime for more than 30 years, until Mr. Trump was indicted. In fact, he was caught on tape admitting to a ghostwriter six years ago that he had confidential files but didn't report them.

Mr. Bragg may have been aware that both Hillary Clinton ($113,000 fine) and Barack Obama ($350,000 fine) violated campaign finance laws. Neither was the subject of federal criminal charges by local prosecutors.

A number of left-wing celebrities and politicians have recently challenged the election, including 2004 Congressman, former Democratic California Sen. Barbara Boxer, and unsuccessful Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. They sought to delay or restart vote counting, or bypass electors at the federal level to ignore the popular vote in each state.

These lawsuits are part of other efforts that are highly partisan and meritless. Remember President Trump's “Russian collusion” hoax and “Russian disinformation” laptop travesty?

In another first, some blue states are suing to remove Trump's name from their ballots on charges of “insurrection” for which he has never been charged.

Add up the deaths, damage, and duration of the Antifa/BLM riots in the summer of 2020. Then compare that tally to the one-day riot on January 6th.

The former turned out to be much more lethal, long-lasting, and destructive. But of the 14,000 rioters arrested in 2020, very few were ever prosecuted, much less convicted.

In contrast, the Biden administration sought to jail hundreds of people for allegedly committing crimes such as “illegal parades” on January 6th.

America is entering dangerous times.

Ideology and political affiliation increasingly determine crime and punishment. Opponents are targeted first, then laws are twisted and redefined to convict them.

Leftists are waging court battles with an implicit message to their political opponents: “Keep quiet or suffer the consequences.”

Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow at the Center for American Greatness. He is a classicist and historian at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and the author of Basic Books' The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won. You can get in touch by emailing authorvdh@gmail.com.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.