The same rinse, repeat cycle seems likely if and when Trump is hit by even more charges over the January 6 insurrection and election tampering in Georgia. He raised more than $4m in the 24 hours after the indictment became public. The former president saturated the news cycle, enjoyed a boost in the polls and forced his primary rivals to rally around him. In short, this is less a gamechanger than a replay of less than three months ago when Trump was charged by state prosecutors in New York with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records over a hush money payment to an adult film star. A Fox News interview with Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene was accompanied by the chyron: “Trump indicted on same day Burisma scandal potentially confirmed” – the word potentially doing an awful lot of work. They will also point to House Republicans’ increasingly noisy bribery allegations against Biden and his family (for which they have provided no evidence) as proof of a double standard. They will say both Biden and former vice-president Mike Pence were also caught with classified documents while forgetting – or wilfully ignoring – that Biden and Pence complied with the authorities while Trump allegedly obstructed justice. They will swallow his claim of “election interference” by his enemies. Photograph: US Department of Justice/AFP/Getty Images This undated image released by the US Department of Justice, shows documents allegedly seized at Mar-a-Lago spread over a carpet. Senator JD Vance of Ohio described it as a “sham indictment”, Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee compared the US to a “banana republic” and Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri told Fox News, “if the president in power can just jail his political opponents, which is what Joe Biden is trying to do tonight, we don’t have a republic any more.” Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida and chief rival to Trump in the Republican presidential primary election, wrote on Twitter: “The weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society … Why so zealous in pursuing Trump yet so passive about Hillary or Hunter?” “I, and every American who believes in the rule of law, stand with President Trump against this grave injustice.” “It is unconscionable for a President to indict the leading candidate opposing him,” tweeted Kevin McCarthy, speaker of the House of Representatives. I don’t think Merrick Garland had anything to do with it except appointing him.”īut what of the Republican party? Did it solemnly accept news of the indictment and call on Americans to allow justice to take its course? Did the Trump fever finally break, with party leaders denouncing the old demagogue and ushering in a new era? He’s very rigorous and vigorous and independent and that’s what you want here and that’s what’s needed. It is Smith who investigated the Mar-a-Lago documents case.Ĭarl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia, says: “I don’t think he’s an overreaching prosecutor. The attorney general, Merrick Garland, has also kept them at arm’s length by appointing Jack Smith as special counsel. Joe Biden tries to avoid commenting on Trump’s myriad legal troubles. The White House knows it cannot afford to put a foot wrong. Photograph: Giorgio Viera/AFP/Getty Images It’s Trump’s latest stress test for American democracy: can the state hold a former president accountable and apply the rule of law? There was a near miss for Richard Nixon, who could have faced federal charges over Watergate but was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford.Ī police car is parked outside the Mar-a-Lago Club, home of former president Donald Trump earlier this year. All have been prosecuted and convicted of corruption in the past 15 years. Second, Trump could soon join a notorious club that includes Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac of France and Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak of South Korea. Thursday night’s action by the justice department was genuinely monumental.įirst, it raises the question: what was Trump doing with government secrets? It was reported last month that prosecutors obtained an audio recording in which Trump talks about holding on to a classified Pentagon document related to a potential attack on Iran. It is often tempting to hype every Trump drama out of proportion and then lose sight of when something genuinely monumental has happened.
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