GOP, Trump and Justice
Terry H. Schwadron
June 7, 2023
From the constant media coverage, indictment watch for former President Donald Trump is officially the order of the day — unless you are one of the growing number of Republican rivals for the presidential nomination.
We’re being served up a constant stream of televised reporting and legal, political, and strategic analysis on details of the building legal case against Trump in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. Indeed, given that we have no Justice Department documents or even statements, the volume of details about what might be pieces of evidence is almost surprising. Each detail, each grand jury witness sighting — reported or leaked — is being analyzed over and over with a view towards possible charges or timing.
Trump himself once again is issuing daily, strident messages about his pending indictment, making “fairness” here about someone who has not yet been formally charged into more of a one-sided political volley meant to harden public defenses — even if they have no relevance in a courtroom.
At the same time, we’re seeing yet more Republican candidates entering the presidential sweepstakes, each with the usual stew of analysts ruing whether any of them have a political “lane” in which to run, in which to distinguish their candidacy from the next rival. Indeed, the candidates seem to have been turning themselves inside-out in trying to set themselves apart from Trump the person while still claiming allegiance to Trump fans.
But the one consistent thing among Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Asa Hutchinson, Vivek Ramaswmy, and now Mike Pence is that none of them are saying the obvious about their candidacy: Donald Trump may not be available to serve because he’ll be in court facing criminal charges — or serving out a punitive sentence. Chris Christie came closest, saying outright that Trump used his office to grift for personal gain, but stopped short of saying the former guy is headed for the slammer.
Where’s the Beef?
It’s a curious omission in these Republican public speeches, interviews, town halls and campaigns.
So far, they all mention that Trump is “looking backward” to continue drumming home his perceived victimhood to made-up election fraud in 2020 rather than offering a distinct program for the future. And they each have repeated — with varying degrees of accuracy or evidence –the notion that the Justice Department and FBI are running a “witch-hunt” prosecutorial campaign against Trump. DeSantis already has all but promised to invite pardon requests from Trump and hundreds convicted of charges resulting from the insurrection attempt at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
But they stop well short of two obvious facts. Trump, already facing felony charges in New York over tax fraud and campaign abuses for seeking to hide cover-up payments to exotic dancer Stormy Daniels, is about to see a load more criminal charges of increasing severity from the federal Justice Department and from a Georgia district attorney. And, from his own repeated public statements, Trump has put himself in the frame for those chargeable situations — though he describes himself as legally blameless for each of them.
So, it’s a little nuts that these erstwhile candidates are asking us to vote for them based on their view of reality when they won’t discuss the obvious truth facing them: We are about to see criminal indictments of a former and would-be president. For a bunch who claim top priority for law and order thinking on the one hand and a morally pure society on the other, for them to ignore allegations of criminality by their party leader may make sense in politics, but not in the real world.
Only in the Political World
In this tipsy-turvy world of partisan politics, you would think that the perceived abusiveness of Justice, the FBI and district attorneys to do their job in enforcing laws is the important focus rather than the idea that we might have a guy running for president while under criminal indictment for acts that only he finds as blameless.
While there is no Constitutional ban on a presidential candidate under indictment — or even having been convicted — why isn’t it a political demand to find indictment or conviction as disqualifying? Trump may be unavailable for campaigning if he is in a courtroom every day starting in March, and if he is convicted of a felony, he will be unable to vote in his home state of Florida.
But he can be president?
From his Republican rivals, the fear of losing Trump’s fan base outweighs the idea of speaking the kind of “truth” about politics that they are demanding for looking at Joe Biden.
Is it not reasonable to think that Trump’s Republican rivals might start every speech with the announcement that each of them will be available to do the job, while Trump may well not be? More to the point, shouldn’t we be hearing from these Republican candidates that they are in the race, in part at least, because the activities which Trump has pursued about the 2020 election, about Jan. 6, about seeking to elude turnover of classified documents all are falling into the category of criminal behavior?
Apart from winning, isn’t there a larger values leadership role here for the rivals?
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