Donald Trump has warned of “potential death & destruction” if he’s convicted of a crime. One would hope that his supporters would have better sense than rioting uselessly in reaction to Trump being sent to prison, but no one can say for sure. Indeed, the Secret Service has yet to weigh in on how they could fulfill their oaths to protect the president — or ex-president — if he’s sent to prison.
And then there’s the question of what would happen if Trump refused to go. What would happen if he actually won the election and was convicted of a crime?
Those are just a few of the monumental challenges that would face the nation if Trump were convicted.
In fact, the unprecedented action in indicting Trump, an ex-president, hasn’t seemed to phase the Democrats or the radical left. They are playing with fire and are oblivious to the sparks that could set off a conflagration that could engulf much of the country.
It would be one thing if any of the prosecutions hanging over Trump’s head were slam-dunk cases, but only a partisan hack would say such a thing about them. And call me old-fashioned, but if you’re going to indict an ex-president who, by-the-by, happens to be far in front for the nomination for president for his party to face the man whose administration is prosecuting him, shouldn’t the evidence be ironclad? Shouldn’t the case be self-evident to all Americans from both parties?
Jack Goldsmith served in the first Bush administration as an assistant attorney general, among other offices. He is, by no means, a Trump lover. But he offers some of the clearest assessments of the extraordinary danger Joe Biden and the Democrats are putting the nation in by prosecuting an ex-president.
Goldsmith writes in The New York Times:
The prosecution may well have terrible consequences beyond the department for our politics and the rule of law. It will probably inspire ever more aggressive tit-for-tat investigations of presidential actions in office by future Congresses and by administrations of the opposing party, to the detriment of sound government.
The Department of Justice has already cut corners in prosecuting Trump and his aides in previous court cases. The Justice Department IG has called them out for numerous transgressions, although he stopped short of accusing Justice Department employees of political bias.
“These are not whataboutism points. They are the context in which a very large part of the country will fairly judge the legitimacy of the Justice Department’s election fraud prosecution of Mr. Trump,” wrote Goldsmith.
This deeply unfortunate timing looks political and has potent political implications even if it is not driven by partisan motivations. And it is the Biden administration’s responsibility, as its Justice Department reportedly delayed the investigation of Mr. Trump for a year and then rushed to indict him well into G.O.P. primary season. The unseemliness of the prosecution will most likely grow if the Biden campaign or its proxies use it as a weapon against Mr. Trump if he is nominated.
Biden and his official surrogates won’t have to say a word about Trump’s legal problems. The mainstream media, walking hand in hand with the Biden administration, will do all the heavy lifting for the campaign. Biden’s health concerns, his son’s influence peddling, and the president’s own legal exposure in pay-for-play schemes while he was vice president will be forgotten or shoved into a corner. Biden can remain above it all, claiming that he “can’t comment on an ongoing criminal case.”
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But it’s after Trump is convicted or acquitted that the real consequences of what’s being done to him will become apparent.
It may also exacerbate the criminalization of politics. The indictment alleges that Mr. Trump lied and manipulated people and institutions in trying to shape law and politics in his favor. Exaggeration and truth shading in the facilitation of self-serving legal arguments or attacks on political opponents have always been commonplace in Washington. These practices will probably be disputed in the language of, and amid demands for, special counsels, indictments and grand juries.
The next Republican who wins the presidency is going to make Democrats rue the day they ever tried to get Trump because they allowed their hate of the man to override what was best for the country.
