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The Atlantic: "If Trump Is Guilty, Does It Matter If the Prosecution Was Political?" [View all]
Superb essay by David A. Graham in response to Republican complaints that the New York prosecution of Trump was "politically motivated." Graham writes:
They have a point, but it’s not the condemnation they believe. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is an elected prosecutor who ran as a Democrat in a heavily Democratic city. Trump also received more scrutiny from prosecutors after he became a political figure than he’d ever experienced before. But none of this has any bearing on whether Trump actually committed the crimes with which he was charged.
The bar for convicting any defendant in the American justice system is extremely high: It requires a unanimous decision by 12 citizens who deem a crime to have occurred beyond a reasonable doubt. A prosecutor may well have political motivation, but his motivation isn’t what determines a verdict; he must prove his charges in court, through an adversarial process. Despite the yelps that Trump was tried in a kangaroo court, his lawyers had every opportunity to challenge jurors, introduce evidence, question prosecution witnesses, and call their own.
After his lawyers had done that, jurors swiftly found that Trump had falsified 34 business records. The questions that these Republicans ought to answer, as the journalist David S. Bernstein writes, are: Do you believe this should be legal? And if not, which of these acts do you believe Trump didn’t commit? Because what none of Trump’s would-be vindicators is willing to argue is that he didn’t try to hide a payment to Stormy Daniels to prevent her from talking about their sexual encounter. The more important question is not what motivated the charges, but whether they were justified and proved to a jury’s satisfaction.
[ . . . . ]
Republican cries of political prosecution can also be understood in another, better way. Because Trump’s defenders are unwilling to argue that he didn’t falsify the records or that it shouldn’t be a crime, they’re actually arguing that he should get a pass on crimes they view as minor because he’s a political figure. The American justice system has never held that someone should be immune from repercussions for their behavior simply because they’re a politician. Now Trump and his allies are making versions of this extremely swampy argument, both at the Supreme Court and in the court of public opinion.
“If they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone,” Trump said at a press conference this morning. Indeed, that’s the point of equal justice under the law.
The bar for convicting any defendant in the American justice system is extremely high: It requires a unanimous decision by 12 citizens who deem a crime to have occurred beyond a reasonable doubt. A prosecutor may well have political motivation, but his motivation isn’t what determines a verdict; he must prove his charges in court, through an adversarial process. Despite the yelps that Trump was tried in a kangaroo court, his lawyers had every opportunity to challenge jurors, introduce evidence, question prosecution witnesses, and call their own.
After his lawyers had done that, jurors swiftly found that Trump had falsified 34 business records. The questions that these Republicans ought to answer, as the journalist David S. Bernstein writes, are: Do you believe this should be legal? And if not, which of these acts do you believe Trump didn’t commit? Because what none of Trump’s would-be vindicators is willing to argue is that he didn’t try to hide a payment to Stormy Daniels to prevent her from talking about their sexual encounter. The more important question is not what motivated the charges, but whether they were justified and proved to a jury’s satisfaction.
[ . . . . ]
Republican cries of political prosecution can also be understood in another, better way. Because Trump’s defenders are unwilling to argue that he didn’t falsify the records or that it shouldn’t be a crime, they’re actually arguing that he should get a pass on crimes they view as minor because he’s a political figure. The American justice system has never held that someone should be immune from repercussions for their behavior simply because they’re a politician. Now Trump and his allies are making versions of this extremely swampy argument, both at the Supreme Court and in the court of public opinion.
“If they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone,” Trump said at a press conference this morning. Indeed, that’s the point of equal justice under the law.
Full essay at: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/05/trump-manhattan-guilty-verdict-political-prosecution/678564/
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