7xm End the Criminal Cases Against Trump
With the election now over7xm, the courts have to decide quickly whether to move forward with the criminal cases against Donald Trump. Although this idea will pain my fellow Democrats, all of the cases should be abandoned.
Democracy’s ultimate verdict on these prosecutions was rendered by voters on Election Day. The charges were front and center in the campaign. The president-elect made a central feature of his candidacy that the cases were political and calculated to stop him from being elected again. Despite the prosecutions, more than 75 million people, a majority of the popular vote counted so far, decided to send him back to the White House.
Mr. Trump faces three different prosecutions and a sentencing resulting from another prosecution. Two of the prosecutions were brought in federal courts by a Justice Department special counsel, Jack Smith. The two others were brought in state courts in Manhattan and Atlanta.
The federal cases are history. Mr. Smith plans to resign with other members of his team before Mr. Trump takes office in January, according to a report in The Times. He is now trying to determine how best to wind down the cases, which accuse Mr. Trump of plotting to overturn the 2020 election and illegally possessing classified documents after he left office.
Then there are the state charges, over which President Trump will have no control. A central pillar of American democracy is that no man is above the law. But Mr. Trump isn’t an ordinary man. Moreover, the state cases against him invoke legal strategies that had never been used to criminalize the behavior that prosecutors charge. Rightly or wrongly, they carry the stench of politics and, if pursued, could lay the groundwork for political prosecutions of future presidents.
The theory in the Manhattan case, in which a jury convicted him of 34 felonies, was that Mr. Trump tried to improve his chance of being elected president by paying off a porn star and then manipulated his financial statements to cover up the payment. He now awaits sentencing. His lawyers have asked the judge to toss out both the indictment and conviction, pointing to the Supreme Court’s recent decision on presidential immunity. One of them has also argued that “the stay, and dismissal, are necessary to avoid unconstitutional impediments to President Trump’s ability to govern.”
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