Trump cases could bolster our rule of law
Former President Donald Trump, right, listens as his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani speaks at an event at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, in August 2020. Credit: AFP via Getty Images/JIM WATSON
Finally, prosecutors and the grand juries they empaneled have declared it was a crime to try to steal the 2020 election. It took two-and-a-half years for the state of Georgia and the government of the United States to file their charges, but they did it. We can take it as a substantial message against lawbreaking at the highest levels.
Some prominent people proclaimed Monday a sad day for America as the 41-count indictment from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis against Donald Trump and 18 cohorts was revealed. No, it's an encouraging day when public servants do their jobs and take action to penalize an unprecedented plot against the nation's voters.
The ugly facts required little sleuthing to unearth. Blatantly fake tales of “rigged” electronic voting machines were spread to clog up an earnest process. Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani voiced hallucinatory accusations from a video of local poll workers he never met doing their jobs. Impostors were deployed in an absurd bid to infiltrate the Electoral College.
Faithless Trump was recorded telling a state official to go back and "find" him a specific number of votes as if procuring them from a warehouse. Later, the 45th president would tell Vice President Mike Pence, in public, to trash constitutional practice and block the Electoral College vote for Joe Biden, who won.
How would the Trump team's ludicrous tactics not add up to subverting the Constitution? Maybe its prosecution by Willis and special counsel Jack Smith will have a chilling effect on the nastiest political tricks.
Law enforcers who support the broken-windows theory — pursuing minor transgressions to stem greater lawlessness — could surely see the wisdom of pursuing small corruptions, such as the Trump administration's many violations of Hatch Act provisions limiting political activity by federal employees.
Nearly 30 years ago, as New York City mayor, Giuliani said in a speech about crime: “Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do and how you do it.” Now that he's made himself a criminal defendant, it's clear that Giuliani must have been talking about ceding "lawful authority" to himself.
Genuine law-and-order conservatives do not all bemoan the legal travails of Trump & Co. Quite the contrary. J. Michael Luttig, a retired federal judge, said Tuesday: “All that matters is that the [former] president will be tried for these grave offenses. Had he not, he would have made a mockery out of the Constitution and the rule of law.”
Unique as they are, the cases against the ex-president bring déjà vu.
Trump called it a "perfect phone call" when he tried browbeating Georgia's Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger into altering the vote for Biden.
The previous year, Trump used the same phrase to describe his pressuring Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to contrive an "investigation" against Biden, who was then preparing to run.
The threat against Zelenskyy was an interruption of U.S. aid in defense against Russia. Trump's not-so-veiled threat against Raffensperger was that he'd be taking a "big risk" by refusing to falsify results.
Both political intimidations from the podium of power failed. Biden prevailed. With the Ukraine impeachment, Trump's Republican Party had the votes to acquit him. But this time around, Trump could face juries far less disposed to dismiss facts.
Which is to say, the rule of law has a better chance this time.
Columnist Dan Janison's opinions are his own.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
