The law must be applied fairly to Trump

A Manhattan grand jury has almost concluded its probe of Donald Trump's October 2016 hush-money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels to keep her from publicizing a sexual dalliance that could have derailed his presidential campaign.

But keep in mind the bigger historical picture to which the timing of this indictment — which only Trump has predicted — may matter little in the long run.

That wider perspective is required because of the politically fraught nature of indicting an ex-president — let alone one who says he’s running again next year. Trump, to say the least, has a special record with the functioning of the law. For 40 years he has been sued and has filed suit, and faced other investigations without facing criminal charges.

As feeble as his reflexive claims of “witch hunts” may be, there will run through the Manhattan case and others the very real and very sensitive question of whether Trump is treated by the judicial system as any other citizen would be.

He must be. That’s important for the nation, whether you happen to detest or adulate him. His irresponsible social media call for disruptive protests, which he did not repeat in the last couple of days, will not and should not affect the fate of his potential prosecution.

Presuming an indictment is in the works, District Attorney Alvin Bragg needs to show the public that anyone subject to this same set of facts would have been charged the same way. A $130,000 payment to Daniels was apparently concealed as “legal services” and not reported as an expense of the 2016 Trump campaign — which may have benefited from her silence. It is worth noting that Trump’s ex-attorney Michael Cohen, who advanced the payment, served prison time in part for this very gambit.

Just as surely, the Justice Department must also handle the matter of Trump’s possible mishandling of classified documents just the right way. In that regard, one of Trump's conga line of lawyers was ordered by a federal appeals court on Wednesday to give prosecutors related materials. But the outcome of that special counsel probe into Trump's possible obstruction of justice must not enable political “gotchas” for the sake of it.

The same concern goes for a crucial investigation by the Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney of the 45th president’s attempt to fix the electoral count by which he lost a second term. On Jan. 2, 2021, he told a GOP election official who’d already reassured him of the accuracy of the results: “I just want to find 11,780 votes.” Four days later, Trump incited the Capitol insurrection.

Ex-presidents should get neither breaks nor raw deals in court. For this once-unfathomable set of cases, the whole world is watching to see whether the American justice system can hold all persons accountable.