Scrupulousness and Spinelessness

Special counsel Jack Smith, appointed by incumbent President Joe Biden, is dropping the case against incoming President Trump. That is fatal.

Donald Trump has done it. He has come through again, unscathed — as he has in his entire business life, and now in politics. The former and future president tried to overturn the result of the 2020 election, demanded that federal employees and his own vice president break the law, ultimately fomented a violent uprising, illegally stored secret documents in his private residence and covered up hush money payments — and he will be prosecuted for none of it. In light of Trump’s reelection as president, special counsel Jack Smith requested that the two active cases be dismissed at the federal level; the presiding judge complied.

At this point, the decision is hardly surprising. Shortly after his election loss, Trump politically immunized himself against prosecution. By 2022, extraordinarily early, he had already announced his new candidacy for 2024 so that he could declare any criminal proceedings from that moment on that he knew would be brought against him a vendetta of the Biden administration against an unfavorable competitor.

In the compliant Republican Party and an out-of-control conservative media bubble he has discovered a massive echo chamber for this and the associated delegitimization of the rule of law. Now, as a freshly elected president, he sometimes declares his intention to stop the abuse of the judiciary against political opponents and sometimes he wants to put his adversaries on trial.

The fusion of Trump’s [un]scrupulousness and Republican spinelessness, Elon Musk’s billions and the prospect of another four years of Trump’s judicial nominations is terrifying. Trump himself has always spoken of how the “witch hunt” lawsuits against him make the United States look like a banana republic. This racist expression essentially refers to institutionally weak countries in which corruption and the law of the powerful prevail. Trump is leading the United States in exactly that direction.