The Two Sides Of The Bring Trump To Justice Debate
Two articles (op-eds) each coming from the differing sides on whether or not Trump should be prosecuted even if it inflames his most rabid supporters.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
www.nytimes.com /2022/08/11/opinion/trump-fbi-raid.html
Opinion | The Absurd Argument Against Making Trump Obey the Law
Michelle Goldberg 6-8 minutes 8/11/2022
Michelle Goldberg
Aug. 11, 2022
This article has been updated to include new information about a man who attempted to breach an F.B.I. field office.
It took many accidents, catastrophes, misjudgments and mistakes for Donald Trump to win the presidency in 2016. Two particularly important errors came from James Comey, then the head of the F.B.I., who was excessively worried about what Trump’s supporters would think of the resolution of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.
First, in July 2016, Comey broke protocol to give a news conference in which he criticized Clinton even while announcing that she’d committed no crime. He reportedly did this because he wanted to protect the reputation of the F.B.I. from inevitable right-wing claims that the investigation had been shut down for political reasons.
Then, on Oct. 28, just days before the election, Comey broke protocol again, telling Congress that the Clinton investigation had been reopened because of emails found on the laptop of the former congressman Anthony Weiner. The Justice Department generally discourages filing charges or taking “overt investigative steps” close to an election if they might influence the result. Comey disregarded this because, once again, he dreaded a right-wing freakout once news of the reopened investigation emerged.
“The prospect of oversight hearings, led by restive Republicans investigating an F.B.I. ‘cover-up,’ made everyone uneasy,” The New Yorker reported . In Comey’s memoir, he admitted fearing that concealing the new stage of the investigation — which ended up yielding nothing — would make Clinton, who he assumed would win, seem “ illegitimate .” (He didn’t, of course, feel similarly compelled to make public the investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia.)
Comey’s attempts to pre-empt a conservative firestorm blew up in his face. He helped put Trump in the White House, where Trump did generational damage to the rule of law and led us to a place where prominent Republicans are calling for abolishing the F.B.I.
This should be a lesson about the futility of shaping law enforcement decisions around the sensitivities of Trump’s base. Yet after the F.B.I. executed a search warrant at Trump’s beachfront estate this week, some intelligent people have questioned the wisdom of subjecting the former president to the normal operation of the law because of the effect it will have on his most febrile admirers.
Andrew Yang, one of the founders of a new centrist third party, tweeted about the “millions of Americans who will see this as unjust persecution.” Damon Linker, usually one of the more sensible centrist thinkers, wrote , “Rather than healing the country’s civic wounds, the effort to punish Trump will only deepen them.”
The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta described feeling “nauseous” watching coverage of the raid. “What we must acknowledge — even those of us who believe Trump has committed crimes, in some cases brazenly so, and deserves full prosecution under the law — is that bringing him to justice could have some awful consequences,” he wrote.
In some sense, Alberta’s words are obviously true; Trumpists are already issuing death threats against the judge who signed off on the warrant, and a Shabbat service at his synagogue was reportedly canceled because of the security risk. On Thursday, an armed man tried to breach an F.B.I. field office in Ohio, and The New York Times reported that he appears to have attended a pro-Trump rally in Washington the night before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The former president relishes his ability to stir up a mob; it’s part of what makes him so dangerous.
We already know, however, that the failure to bring Trump to justice — for his company’s alleged financial chicanery and his alleged sexual assault , for obstructing Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation and turning the presidency into a squalid influence-peddling operation , for trying to steal an election and encouraging an insurrection — has been disastrous.
What has strengthened Trump has not been prosecution but impunity, an impunity that some of those who stormed the Capitol thought, erroneously, applied to them as well. Trump’s mystique is built on his defiance of rules that bind everyone else. He is reportedly motivated to run for president again in part because the office will protect him from prosecution. If we don’t want the presidency to license crime sprees, we should allow presidents to be indicted, not accept some dubious norm that ex-presidents shouldn’t be.
We do not know the scope of the investigation that led a judge to authorize the search of Mar-a-Lago, though it reportedly involves classified documents that Trump failed to turn over to the government even after being subpoenaed . More could be revealed soon: Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on Thursday that the Justice Department had filed a motion in court to unseal the search warrant.
It should go without saying that Trump and his followers, who howled “Lock her up!” about Clinton, do not believe that it is wrong for the Justice Department to pursue a probe against a presidential contender over the improper handling of classified material. What they believe is that it is wrong to pursue a case against Trump, who bonds with his acolytes through a shared sense of aggrieved victimization.
The question is how much deference the rest of us should give to this belief. No doubt, Trump’s most inflamed fans might act out in horrifying ways; many are heavily armed and speak lustily about civil war. To let this dictate the workings of justice is to accept an insurrectionists’ veto. The far right is constantly threatening violence if it doesn’t get its way. Does anyone truly believe that giving in to its blackmail will make it less aggressive?
It was Trump himself who signed a law making the removal and retention of classified documents a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. Those who think that it would be too socially disruptive to apply such a statute to him should specify which laws they believe the former president is and is not obliged to obey. And those in charge of enforcing our laws should remember that the caterwauling of the Trump camp is designed to intimidate them and such intimidation helped him become president in the first place.
Trump shouldn’t be prosecuted because of politics, but he also shouldn’t be spared because of them. The only relevant question is whether he committed a crime, not what crimes his devotees might commit if he’s held to account.
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www.thebulwark.com /try-trump-at-the-ballot-box-not-in-court/
Try Trump at the Ballot Box, Not in Court
Mona Charen 6-8 minutes 8/24/2022
Last week, responding to Damon Linker’s persuasive arguments about the dangers of criminally prosecuting Trump, I ventured that we might have to sacrifice justice on the altar of prudence. The column provoked a fierce backlash, and while it may seem odd to say this, I’m in sympathy with my critics, and offer these reflections in all modesty. I may be wrong. Perhaps the right path is to pursue justice “though the Heavens fall.” But we cannot pretend that there is no risk to this path. In fact, the stakes could not be higher—the stability of our society—so it’s worth considering all of the possible outcomes before barrelling forward.
The prosecute-and-be-damned party believes fervently that any hesitation to hold Trump criminally liable for his crimes amounts to appeasement and cowardly submission to what Michelle Goldberg calls “the insurrectionists’ veto.” Acknowledging that some on the right are “heavily armed” and speaking “lustily of civil war,” she objects that “The far right is constantly threatening violence if it doesn’t get its way. Does anyone truly believe that giving in to its blackmail will make it less aggressive?”
It’s a great point. The very worst part about refraining from prosecuting Trump is that it would seem to be a victory for bullying and intimidation. I concede that, and it burns. When Trump riles up his mobs and then threatens to unleash them on his opponents, one’s natural reaction is unprintable (by me anyway). It is precisely when he acts like a Mafia don or a fascist that the urge to slap him down with every available weapon is strongest.
And yet, that emotional reaction cannot be the whole story. If the point is to vindicate the rule of law, we have to carefully consider what an indictment and trial of Trump would actually look like.
As we’ve seen in the aftermath of the Mar-a-Lago search, giving Trump a colorable case for “persecution” by the Democrats is a huge gift. His greatest talent is for spectacle. There is no point in denying that he has a genius for making himself the center of attention. Arguably, Twitter hurt him more by evicting him from the platform than any prosecutor has ever done (and there have been several who’ve investigated him). An indictment and trial would place him back at the center of American life—where he longs to be. His every belch and grunt would be newsworthy, just as it was during his presidential term and we’d again be trapped in Trump’s world.
Confronted with the possibility of a trial on federal charges, Trump would be a Vesuvius of trust-dissolving venom. He would impugn every aspect of the justice system. It will all be “corrupt” and “a disgrace” and “so unfair.” The grievance/persecution narrative that he has already germinated would come into full bloom. The country would be transfixed by every piece of evidence, every bit of testimony, and every legal argument. No one would speak of anything else. Everyone would choose sides. Those Republicans who might have been inclined to leave Trump behind would be pulled back into his orbit by the centripetal force of the Great Trump Trial.
The right wing infotainment circuit would transform Trump from a fading former leader into the sacrificial figure who is persecuted for his followers. The Christ imagery favored by his fervent disciples is not subtle. He takes the slings and arrows for conservative, God-fearing, Christian Americans. The search of Trump’s home, though thoroughly justified, reignited the fires of Republican fury that had subsided to embers. As recently as early July, half of Republicans were ready to move on from Trump in 2024. But after the raid, the whole party snapped back to cult status, ready to tear down the FBI, the DOJ, and more on behalf of their hero/martyr.
Trials are tricky endeavors and our system (rightly) sets a high bar for conviction. We can believe passionately that Trump is guilty of multiple offenses. But is all the evidence on which we base that conclusion admissible in a trial? The scope of the offense would of necessity be limited. Lawyers make mistakes, as do judges. And testimony can go awry. Remember the disappointment with Robert Mueller’s performance before Congress?
If Trump is to be tried in Florida for mishandling classified documents, can we be confident that a jury of 12 would not include at least one MAGA-adherent? And what if Trump is tried and acquitted? How much stronger will he seem to the base? Look at everything they threw at me! The Russia hoax. The Mueller investigation. The first impeachment. The second impeachment. And now this communist show trial. And they failed every time!
The danger of striking at the king and missing is not to be discounted.
If the point is to reify the principle that no one is above the law, consider this: In its current incarnation, the Republican party is fully capable of nominating someone indicted for a felony. In fact, it seems more likely that Trump would be the 2024 nominee if he were facing indictment. As Liz Cheney remarked , “Large portions of our party, including the leadership of our party” are “very sick.” So if a Democratic administration indicts Trump and the Republican party nominates him anyway, what does that do to respect for the rule of law? Doesn’t it undermine it? And once nominated by one of the two major parties . . . well, we’ve seen how that can play out.
If Trump were to face a criminal trial, all of the anti-Trump energy in the nation would be diverted into rooting for a verdict from 12 Americans—and then hoping that an appeal were unsuccessful, and then that the Supreme Court did the right thing.
Our more urgent task is to make arguments to a larger jury—the American public—that Trump must never be permitted to wield power again. By all means, assemble the evidence (if it pans out) that he mishandled classified documents, demonstrate that he lied and swindled his followers, show that he orchestrated the attempted coup of January 6. The House January 6th Committee has already made great strides. A recent poll found that 57 percent of Americans think investigations of Trump should continue. What we need is for a critical mass of Republican primary voters to say no to another Trump nomination.
As much as we yearn to see evil punished, our overriding consideration should be keeping Trump from the Oval Office. If a trial makes his return to power even a fraction more likely, it’s not worth the risk. The most important jury is the electorate.
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On paper this sounds like a fair debate - which will cause more anguish to the country, bringing this jackass to justice, or letting him go so he can continue to plague our nation as long as he lives?
We may need a Socrates or Plato to figure this out.
I think prosecuting him and putting him in prison may cause short term problems as his deluded followers act out, but not prosecuting him will cause lasting long term problems with trying to rein in authoritarian figures who believe they are above the law and also want to be our national leaders.
Lock him up.
This is a dubious argument. The same thing was said about the Jan 6 committee, that it would fail to prove Trump's wrongdoing and boomerang on those who want to hold him to account. But the reverse has occurred - the facts have been so compelling that they caused middle of the road Americans to stop and think and pay more attention to the fact that a president tried to overthrow his own government. Trump's standing has fallen drastically among all Americans not infected with MAGA sympathies. The same could happen in a trial, even if one MAGA holdout on the jury prevented a conviction. The truth would be seen and his mojo would die.