“Our long national nightmare” was simply postponed
“Be careful what you wish, as you might get it,” tweeted would-be Tom Swift from his electric car. It has been clear since before the Jan. 6 insurrection that one of Donald J. Trump’s two base skills has been for conning people. The other is for evading justice.
Trump now appears on the eve of receiving the well-deserved lump of legal coal in his stocking many of us had on our Christmas list. But what will be the consequences for the U.S. if he gets it?
Odds makers who in February estimated Trump’s chances of avoiding prosecution at 63 percent now calculate a 71 percent chance he will be indicted before the 2024 election. The odds of a trial and conviction are likely incalculable.
Prosecuting Trump for his manifold legal sins will be a tragedy for democracy, argues The Bulwark’s Jonathan Last. Abuse of criminal prosecution may lie in our future. But prosecution may be our least bad option. Consider them:
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The government chooses not to prosecute: which incentivizes future attempts to overturn elections and legitimizes the stoking of political violence.
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The government prosecutes and loses: which both legitimizes the stoking of political violence and antagonizes the passions of more than a third of the country.
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The government prosecutes and wins: which creates open season for using the government to pursue political enemies, throws the 2024 Republican primary into disarray, and turns Trump into a martyr for his movement.
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Those of us who’ve screamed warnings about Trump since before his election may feel vindicated, Last writes. But so what?
Thanksgiving is past, but we have two things to be thankful for. First, Last explains, the administration’s hands-off approach. President Biden kept his distance from the case — “Barely mentioned it.” Attorney General Merrick Garland handed it over to a special counsel.
Second, in lieu of a special commission that Republicans disallowed, the January 6th Committee’s handling of the investigation was as exemplary as the Trump administration’s and its supporters’ behavior was not. The committee “was diligent in finding and documenting evidence. It contributed a large amount of new information to the public record. Its members avoided histrionics and sought to depoliticize its work.” The two Republicans on the committee sacrificed their seats in service to their country.
Would that President Gerald Ford had not short-circuited the operation of justice in 1974 with his preemptive pardon of Richard Nixon. “The House of 2022 is doing what the House of 1974 should have done,” presidential historian Michael Beschloss said Monday. The Ford pardon held consequences Nixon should have borne instead of posterity. It sent a message that “presidents can live in a sort of free-fire zone and do all sorts of things and ultimately not pay for it.”
Had Nixon faced investigation and indictment, Trump, then 28 and fighting charges of race bias in managing New York rental properties, may have taken little notice. But decades of Nixon’s lasting ignominy may have given the would-be Howard Roark pause before risking his real estate empire to the kind of public scrutiny threatening to bring it down today.
“My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over,” Ford said upon taking office in August 1974. It was not. With his preemptive pardon of Nixon the next month, Ford simply postponed it.
Ford might have spared us the Trump administration and the turmoil likely before us. The consequences of the pardon were foreseeable.
Ah, but we were so much older then….
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