Finally, The Trump Case We’ve Been Waiting For

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One word came to mind when I heard the news this week that Donald Trump received a targeted letter from Justice Department special prosecutor Jack Smith, indicating that the former President is likely to be indicted on charges related to his effort to subvert the 2020 election and stay in power: Finally. This, in the end, is the heart of the matter, a long-delayed reckoning with an offense against the constitutional system so great that it has no historical precedent before Trump ever did such a thing.

Trump received the target letter on Sunday, and revealed it in one of his trademark hysterical social-media posts on Tuesday: WONDERFUL NEWS! Over the next two days, there were still more legal setbacks. In Florida, a Trump-appointed federal judge overseeing Smith’s other criminal case against the former President for illegal handling of classified documents expressed extreme skepticism at Trump’s argument that he should delay a trial indefinitely because he is running for President. In Georgia, the state’s Supreme Court ruled against Trump’s motion to block the Fulton County district attorney, Fani T. Willis, from prosecuting him for his efforts to force officials to reinstate his 2020 state loss; criminal charges could result in the coming weeks. In New York, meanwhile, a judge said Trump could not move the venue of his criminal trial to Manhattan for allegedly paying hush money to silence a former porn star with whom he had an affair. Trump also faces two other civil cases in New York, both of which could go to trial next year. America’s new political reality, in short, is: Donald Trump, Full-Time Defendant.

However, Republicans remain in such awe of their Orange Jesusthe honorific that Party apostate Liz Cheney memorably quoted one of her acolytes who called her out during the previous hearings on January 6 that, with each new legal woe, her prospects of winning the 2024 GOP nomination keep increasing. Few if any of these cases are likely to be fully resolved before next years Republican primaries begin. Trumps campaign is clearly a race not only to retake the Oval Office but to save himself from criminal conviction. This convergence of campaign and courtroom is, as former Republican National Committee counsel Benjamin Ginsberg said this week, a toxic mix unprecedented in the American experiment. Something has to give.

The seemingly imminent indictment of Smith is not like all the other cases. In theory, this will force the question that has haunted the country since the night of November 3, 2020, when Trump chose to claim victory in an election he lost: What to do with a President who will do everything to stay in power, even unleashing a violent group of his supporters in the US Capitol? Isn’t that illegal? How not?

For two and a half years, the failure to answer Trump’s endless actions with decisive rebuke has only empowered the former President, allowing him to regain political strength within his party and force its nominal leaders to re-acknowledge his hold on their voters. Consider Mitch McConnell, who is the closest thing the current GOP leadership has to an avowed enemy of the former President. Minutes after Trump was acquitted by the Senate in his second impeachment trial, he gave an impassioned speech about the culpability of former Presidents in the events of January 6th. McConnell did not vote for the conviction but, he insisted, only because of his opposition to the process of impeaching a President who is no longer in office. There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day, McConnell said. The people who stormed this building believed that they were acting on the will and instructions of their President. And that they believe that is an expected result of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole that the defeated President continues to shout through the biggest megaphone on planet Earth. The Senate Republican leader called for the Justice Department to do what his Senate won’t do. President Trump will still be held accountable for everything he did while he was in office, McConnell said. Can’t escape anything. Yet.

But this week, when accountability seemed imminent, McConnell said nothing at all. I will not comment on the various candidates for the Presidency, he told reporters softly. In the House, Speaker Kevin McCarthy is even worse. In 2021, he directly blamed Trump for the attack on the Capitol. Nobody can defend that, and nobody should defend it, he said. This week, however, he attacked the Justice Department for prosecuting Trump in a case that has yet to be filed. This is, he said, an effort to arm the government to chase their No. 1 opponent. According to Politico, the Speaker has promised Trump that he will hold a House vote to remove the two House impeachments against him despite the fact that no one knows if such a thing is constitutionally possible. I don’t see how he can be found criminally responsible, McCarthy said. What criminal activity did he do? He told the people to be peaceful.

Republicans revel every four years in their self-proclaimed status as the party of law and order. Now they are following Trump with attacks on federal prosecutors, the Justice Department, the FBI Its anyone guess how far down this road McCarthy could will go, as the former President combined his legal defense with a political campaign of vengeance, retribution, and personal survival. It was heartening to see pictures of the Speaker as Joe Bidens guest at the annual White House congressional picnic this week, smiling and shouting at an ice-cream bar, even as he seemed ready to set the place on fire if his troubled pro-Trump majority demanded it.

The prospect of Trump returning to the White House is an existential one for American democracy, a political test from which no one can escape. If it wasn’t clear then, it should be now. A reelected Trump would be an unfettered President at all having twice avoided congressional impeachment, and either defeated the Justice Department and the courts or delayed so long that he could try to use his acquired executive powers to overturn the charges against him. Trump, in his continued apocalyptic rhetoric surrounding his bid to retake the White House, has called his 2024 race the final battle. The more I believed he was right.

Given the stakes, there’s a lot to be expected about what Smith’s latest case against Trump might look like. According to the Times, his targeted letter indicated that Trump could be prosecuted under three criminal laws: conspiracy to defraud the government, obstruction of an official proceeding, and even a law enacted after the Civil War to give federal agents the means to prosecute Southern white supremacists, including members of the Ku Klux Klan who used terrorism to keep newly freed Blacks at bay.

But knowing what he’s charged with doesn’t mean there’s nothing left to learn about this unprecedented plot against America. For that, we must await the indictment: Will there be new details showing that the President himself orchestrated the conspiracy to overturn the election results in the battleground states? New examples of Trump pressuring government officials or agencies? Damning evidence in his own words that he knew he lost the election and went ahead anyway? Will there be turncoat Mark Meadows, perhaps? to provide revelations from within Trumps fevered quest to stay in office after speaking to voters? I was expecting and expecting this after more than two and a half years of waiting. Yet somehow those questions still seem to be subject to one that will never be answered and never answered conclusively: Is it too late?

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