Asymmetrical Burdens Of Proof

I got into a discussion yesterday in which I finally tired of the baseless claims of President Trump’s ethical failings, his alleged vindictive use of the DOJ, and that he is enriching himself. Of course, no evidence was presented of anything he has done that is illegal or hasn’t been done by other presidents and absolutley no evidence of him “enriching” himself. 

What I did find interesting about the discussion of his ethical “failings” is that they want to quote things that are alleged to have happened thirty years ago while limiting my scope to the time Democrat presidents occupied the office – anything outside that was off limits.

That’s called an an asymmetrical burden of proof.

One of the defining features of contemporary American politics is the emergence of the idea that asymmetrical burden of proof—an argumentative structure in which one side is required to satisfy every imaginable evidentiary standard while the other side is permitted to make sweeping claims without meeting even the most basic threshold of proof—is legitimate. 

It is tiresome and leads nowhere. 

Nowhere has this dynamic been more visible than in the left’s treatment of Donald Trump. For nearly a decade, Democrats and their media allies have operated under a model in which accusations against Trump require no corroboration, while his denials, defenses, and counter-claims must meet courtroom-level scrutiny before they are even acknowledged.

Consider the 2016 “Russia collusion” narrative, where Trump was accused—based largely on speculation, anonymous leaks, and opposition research—of conspiring with Vladimir Putin to alter the outcome of the election. For years, these allegations were presented as established fact on major news networks. Yet the investigation that followed, led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, failed to establish that any American, including Trump, conspired with Russia. No collusion was charged. No conspiracy was proven. Still, critics treated the absence of evidence not as exoneration but as evidence that the conspiracy must be deeper than imagined. Trump was expected to prove a negative; his accusers bore no such responsibility.

Then came the first impeachment, centered on Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The allegation—that Trump withheld aid in exchange for political favors—was driven by a whistleblower whose identity was shielded, whose motives were debated, and whose account, by definition, came secondhand. Democrats demanded that the nation accept this single untested narrative as definitive, while simultaneously denying Trump the right to call witnesses he believed would exonerate him. His burden of proof was total; theirs was nonexistent.

The pattern repeated in the second impeachment, launched after the January 6 riot. Democrats argued that Trump had “incited an insurrection,” yet declined to meet the legal standard for that claim. They needed no direct evidence of intent, no causal chain, no examination of security failures, and no acknowledgment of Trump’s explicit call for supporters to act “peacefully.” The mere existence of a riot was treated as proof of his guilt. Trump, meanwhile, was expected to disprove emotional inference.

More recently, the legal and political response to Trump’s challenges of the 2020 election demonstrated the same asymmetry. Democrats were permitted to claim—often without documentation—that every procedural change made during the pandemic was lawful, that every ballot collection practice was proper, that every irregularity was innocuous. Trump, however, was expected to produce courtroom-ready evidence for every concern in real time, even as judges dismissed cases on procedural grounds rather than on the merits. His questions required proof; their assurances required none.

The asymmetrical burden of proof is not merely a rhetorical trick. It is a political weapon. It transforms debate into indictment, dissent into guilt, and accusation into fact. A republic cannot function when one side must meet every standard while the other is bound by none. 

The issue is not whether Trump is right on every point—no politician is—but whether the rules of argument apply equally. 

Increasingly, they do not.