In the tumultuous political life of Donald Trump, from candidacy to presidency and to candidacy again, most every norm has been upended.
This nation now faces the absurd but completely realistic possibility that a former president, twice impeached, could return to the White House while entangled in several felony criminal trials. Even more absurd, he could theoretically be behind bars on the date he takes office.
This week, a third multi-count indictment has been leveled against the former president, and it’s the most damning to date.
In it, special counsel Jack Smith independently confirms what extensive hearings in the U.S. House of Representatives previously established: namely, that Trump, along with several co-conspirators, tried to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 election, which the Republican incumbent narrowly lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
In doing so, Trump was not legitimately contesting the results of the election. He had already done so in multiple courts, and lost at every step along the appeals process. He was instead, according to the indictment, attempting a desperate final strategy to remain in office by repeatedly airing claims of rampant voter fraud that he knew to be false; by pressuring state and federal officials, including his own vice president, Mike Pence, to overturn the results; by concocting a scheme in which fake electors from a handful of states would try to derail the ratification in Congress of Biden’s victory.
In the process, Trump knowingly and willfully encouraged his supporters to violently protest his defeat, resulting in the Jan. 6, 2021, siege on the U.S. Capitol that endangered the lives of law enforcement, members of Congress and their employees, and of Pence himself.
Trump defied almost two and a half centuries of precedent in this nation, in which the defeated incumbent, no matter how bitter or close an election, peacefully left office and gracefully relinquished power.
Such a peaceful transfer of authority is not just some social nicety. It is what others before Trump have known is an essential part of democracy, of distinguishing the United States of America from dictatorships. The will of the people, as expressed at the ballot box, reigns supreme. The losing party licks its wounds and prepares to fight another day. To allow the losing party, or a losing candidate, to retain or seize office through illegal means would turn the forces of anarchy loose, leading to the type of bloody and deadly conflict this nation experienced during its lone civil war.
Such a threat to democracy cannot be allowed to go unpunished. Smith, who has previously demonstrated his legal courage as a prosecutor of international war criminals, is pursuing a prosecution to make sure it doesn’t.
Still, it is an oddity of our Constitution that no matter the outcome of this case — or the two going on three other criminal proceedings against Trump — there is nothing to keep him from reclaiming the White House.
Nothing but the will of the American people.
Sadly, the number of Republican voters who have been deceived by the former president is so large that Trump, according to the opinion polls, is far ahead of all of his many challengers for his party’s nomination.
Every indictment so far has done nothing to weaken that support. In fact, it has perversely strengthened it, fueling a right-wing paranoia that believes Trump is a victim of a political persecution.
Will the Republican Party come to its senses and dump Trump for another candidate who meets what heretofore would have been considered a minimal qualification of not facing dozens of felony counts?
We can only pray.
