Donald Trump’s prosecution is a triumph
OpinionDonald Trump: The Guardian:
While there’s not even a theoretical bar to prosecuting a president once they leave office, Alvin Bragg has bravely taken a stand
Trump’s prosecution is a triumph. Not a shame. Not a tragedy. A triumph — one of the great events in American presidential history. The public and the pundits might disagree by the end of Trump’s trial in Manhattan — perhaps the first of a few — but the significance of what district attorney Alvin Bragg has managed to do will be wholly unsullied, in substance, by the outcome of his case.
One of the major questions in American political and legal thought has been whether presidents may be allowed to commit crimes. As it stands, the position of the Justice Department is that they may — for half a century, it has held that a president cannot face criminal prosecution while in office. And while there’s not even a theoretical bar to prosecuting a president once they leave office, no one had ever tried it, leaving the question of whether criminal laws functionally apply to presidents at all, as a practical matter, a matter of speculation.
Here Alvin Bragg has bravely taken a stand: a person may, in fact, be indicted for a crime even if they were once president— just as though they were an ordinary person to whom laws applied. This is tremendous news. No rifts have opened in the time-space continuum.
To be sure, as many observers have already written, Bragg may have his work cut out for him. His case against Trump is a multi-part argument that hinges on the idea that Trump concealed hush money payments to abet violations of election law. It has troubled many that Bragg may lose this case. And this is true. Sometimes prosecutors lose cases.
But it would be wrong to suppose on that basis, as some have, that prosecutors who believe presidents have committed crimes have a responsibility to behave like political strategists: to bear public opinion and the expectations of the press in mind by only bringing forth the simplest, most straightforward cases and pursuing only the largest, most eye-popping crimes while letting other offenses slide.