Michael Tomasky runs down all the roadblocks, delays, ratfucks and manipulations being used by the Trump team (which is a D-List team at best, which says something) to ensure that Trump does not go to trial on any of his criminal cases before the election. It’s depressing, but it’s true and you should read the whole thing if you haven’t seen it all put together.
His conclusion is absolutely correct:
When we talk about what’s wrong with our democracy, we talk about our political structures and processes. We talk about the Senate. We talk about the Electoral College. We talk about gerrymandering. And of course all these problems are real.
We don’t talk about our legal system. We should. The American legal system doesn’t uphold the values of democratic rule like equality. It far more often corrupts and perverts them. Rich people like Trump twist the system into a pretzel and win delay after delay after delay. Corporations pay fines, usually not that large when considered against their bottom line, and they admit no wrongdoing, even after their practices have killed people. Poor people, meanwhile, get pushed around by the system constantly.
There is no such thing in this country as equality before the law, and everyone knows it. And I would argue that this legal inequality does more damage to democracy than all the political inequities for the simple reason that they’re more visible. And they’ve never been more visible than they are now with Trump. If he is able to push all these cases back past November, or at least three of them (the Bragg case should proceed this summer), and then especially if he wins the White House and pardons himself, that will constitute the biggest failure of the rule of law in the history of the country.
When we talk about what’s wrong with our democracy, we talk about our political structures and processes. We talk about the Senate. We talk about the Electoral College. We talk about gerrymandering. And of course all these problems are real.
We don’t talk about our legal system. We should. The American legal system doesn’t uphold the values of democratic rule like equality. It far more often corrupts and perverts them. Rich people like Trump twist the system into a pretzel and win delay after delay after delay. Corporations pay fines, usually not that large when considered against their bottom line, and they admit no wrongdoing, even after their practices have killed people. Poor people, meanwhile, get pushed around by the system constantly.
There is no such thing in this country as equality before the law, and everyone knows it. And I would argue that this legal inequality does more damage to democracy than all the political inequities for the simple reason that they’re more visible. And they’ve never been more visible than they are now with Trump. If he is able to push all these cases back past November, or at least three of them (the Bragg case should proceed this summer), and then especially if he wins the White House and pardons himself, that will constitute the biggest failure of the rule of law in the history of the country.
None of that takes into consideration that after what we’ve seen happen with the Fanni Willis case it’s entirely possible the whole thing could blow up into a mistrial or even a dismissal or an acquittal. There are no guarantees on any of this.
As Tomasky says:
The lesson? We can’t count on the legal system to stop Trump. We have to stop him ourselves. One conviction would be nice; two would probably be quite helpful. But we can’t count on the broken legal system to do a job that we ourselves have to do at the polls.
Honestly, I don’t even think this is such a bad thing. I believe Trump should be held accountable for his crimes. It would be a travesty if they didn’t at least try. But at the end of the day this is a political problem and to the extent we still have a democracy politics is the only way to stop him. This isn’t just about Trump it’s about a political party that has become an authoritarian movement because it’s losing popular support. The only way to stop it is to defeat it, otherwise they’re just going to keep going, with Trump or without him.