AMERICAN print and electronic media are currently inundated with reports of former President Donald Trump following his conviction as a criminal. He has launched a vehement attack on the rule of law, criticizing the justice system and thereby exposing the gravity of the choice awaiting America’s voters in the upcoming elections. Trump’s conviction on all counts in his first criminal trial affirmed the principle on which the United States is founded—that everyone is equal before the law and that no one, not even a billionaire and former or possibly future president, enjoys impunity. However, the troubling aspect is that top Republicans have joined his assault on the justice system, seemingly unaware of the threat to those fundamental values at this critical juncture.
According to Trump, “This was a rigged, disgraceful trial. The real verdict is going to be on November 5, by the people, and they know what happened here,” Trump said minutes after a jury foreperson announced he was guilty on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records to hide a hush money payment to an adult film star. After returning to Trump Tower and greeting supporters with a clenched fist, Trump issued a written statement that made clear that he views his own fate and the nation’s as indistinguishable — a familiar hallmark of a dictatorial leader. “I’m a very innocent man, and it’s okay, I’m fighting for our country. I’m fighting for our Constitution. Our whole country is being rigged right now,” Trump wrote.
President Joe Biden’s campaign shares the belief that the ultimate judgment on Trump will come in the general election. Despite the verdict, they emphasize that keeping Trump out of the Oval Office hinges on voting. Tyler, from Biden’s campaign, asserts that Trump will likely be the Republican nominee, emphasizing the unprecedented threat he poses to democracy. Trump’s conviction by a unanimous New York jury represents a significant low in his tumultuous life, marked by financial highs and lows, multiple marriages, TV stardom, legal issues, his 2016 outsider election win, and his norm-shattering presidency, culminating in attempts to undermine democracy post-2020 loss.
Among an electorate that Trump has constantly polarized, the verdict is being viewed as biased and one-sided. But in truth, this is a sombre and even tragic passage of US history. Americans have never seen an ex-president convicted of a crime, and a country already torn apart by bitter political and cultural polarization is likely in for a rocky time. The implications are enormous. They begin with the potential consequences for an election in five months that could be decided by the shift of just a few thousand votes in a few states. Trump has been preparing voters for months for the possibility that he would be found guilty in a case that prosecutors said centred around a bid to mislead voters in 2016. He has claimed his four criminal indictments are a plot by Biden to destroy him. In essence, he has been working to shatter his greatest norm yet — the idea that it would be unthinkable for a felon to serve as President.
No one can know how voters will react to Trump’s latest moment of ignominy. His conviction will certainly energize his loyal base and his campaign will try to create a backlash to the verdict among more moderate voters. If they succeed, judgment may come to be remembered as the day Biden lost the election. Or, the guilty verdict could play into Biden’s campaign theme that his predecessor is too corrupt and extreme to serve as president again. Moderate and suburban voters whom Trump has always struggled to attract could be further alienated.
But Trump’s tactics and his capacity to shape the views of his supporters — with the aid of the conservative media machine — will inevitably mean that the legal system will join the electoral system as another essential institution of American governance that is now viewed as illegitimate by millions of citizens.
And if it is Trump who raises his hand to swear to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution on January 20 as the 47th president, America will be led by a criminal whose duties will include being the symbolic head of the justice system. The danger is acute because with his attempt to stay in power after losing the 2020 election, Trump has already shown he will do what it takes to save himself, even if his actions catastrophically hurt democratic institutions.
Trump’s call to take arms for a campaign against the legal system will mean that every Republican will be forced to put it at the centre of their 2024 campaigns. That is going to create a torrent of poison that will be likely worse than we saw in the ‘Stop the Steal’ campaign that preceded January 6. And that is going to further unsettle an already sensitive country. Moderate and highly educated Americans were worried about ‘Stop the Steal’ campaign which created widespread doubt about the honesty of our electoral system and led many people to believe that fraud had been committed in 2020, are now worried about the tirade Trump and his fellow Republicans are going to unleash in coming days to secure victory at the pools.
The charges against him were not just cooked up by prosecutors as Trump claimed. They were brought by a grand jury. The ex-president was offered the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, and he was judged by a jury of his peers. Even now, the Constitution which he claims, has been hijacked will protect him with a full array of appeals, as in all of his other criminal cases. But once a jury has delivered a verdict, justice is considered served. So the immediate Republican attacks on the judge, the court and the verdict represent an extraordinary effort by one of the country’s two major political parties to turn against the integrity of the legal system which perhaps is bound to fail.
—The writer is Former Civil Servant and Consultant (ILO) & International Organisation for Migration.
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