No one is above the law - holding Trump accountable is necessary for our democracy and trust in our legal system.
ROBERT REICH in Robertreich.Substack.Com
You’re going to hear three basic criticisms
of this indictment. Let me rebut each in turn.
1. It sets a dangerous precedent.
Rubbish. In order for the justice system to
work, there must be trust that the system will not play favorites or ignore the
wrongdoing of the powerful.
Donald Trump has done everything possible
over the last seven years to destroy that trust for his own political gain.
It is true that no former president has
ever been indicted, but no former president has done what Donald Trump has done
— repeatedly defied laws and disregarded the U.S. Constitution. America never
quite recovered from Gerald Ford’s decision to pardon Richard Nixon for all
crimes he might have committed.
The Framers of the Constitution explicitly
provided that presidents could be charged after leaving office. Article I
Section 3 states that a president impeached by the House and convicted and
removed from office by the Senate “shall nevertheless be liable and subject to
indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law.”
The fundamental idea that no one is above
the law is only true if we make it so. Holding our leaders accountable is vital
to maintaining trust in our legal system, and the survival of our democracy
itself.
2. The indictment plays into Trump’s
claims that he’s the victim of a witch hunt and will further rile his core
supporters
Irrelevant. Undoubtedly some Trump
supporters will be upset by this. The indictment will confirm for them that
Trump is not only being prosecuted but also being persecuted.
But Trump has used every move against him
so far — whether by the FBI, the Justice Department, Congress, or even
opponents in the Republican Party — to claim he’s the victim of a witch hunt.
This indictment is not fundamentally different from all the other charges and
allegations. His entire campaign is founded on variations of this same
grievance.
But in this case, a grand jury has found that
he broke the law. It will be harder to cast an independent grand jury composed
of ordinary people as part of a “deep state” witch hunt.
3. This is the weakest of the cases now
being prepared against Trump
So what? To be sure, paying hush money to
cover up something embarrassing during a presidential campaign is not nearly on
the same level as asking Georgia’s secretary of state to “come up” with the
exact number of votes needed to reverse the outcome of Georgia’s presidential
election, or fomenting an attack on the U.S. Capitol.
And it may be true that an allegation like
this is usually treated as a misdemeanor rather than a felony.
None of this alters the fact that a grand
jury had enough evidence in this case to decide that Trump broke the law.
That’s the critical point. A federal judge can decide whether the case rises to
a felony or is more appropriately treated as a misdemeanor. The overriding
issue is that no person is above the law, not even a former president.
Indeed, since the basic issue here is one
of accountability, this case could actually open the way for the other, more
serious ones. Prosecutors in Georgia and Washington won’t have to bear the
burden of justifying an action that had never been taken before. Their more
serious charges would come to a public that had already adjusted to the
phenomenon of a Trump indictment.
© 2021 robertreich.substack.com
ROBERT REICH is the Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a senior fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. He served as secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time magazine named him one of the 10 most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. His book include: "Aftershock" (2011), "The Work of Nations" (1992), "Beyond Outrage" (2012) and, "Saving Capitalism" (2016). He is also a founding editor of The American Prospect magazine, former chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary, "Inequality For All." Reich's newest book is "The Common Good" (2019). He's co-creator of the Netflix original documentary "Saving Capitalism," which is streaming now.