As a candidate, as president, and after leaving the Oval Office, donald trump It forced him to use terms like “historic”, “unpublished” and “unprecedented” so much that it actually wore off from use. Since this Thursday, a grand jury Manhattan district attorney at the meeting held in New York since January by the Democrat Alvin Braggdecided to impeach him and make him the first president of the United States to face criminal prosecutions, these concepts regained all their strength. In this case, it’s also deep gravity.
The exact charges are not yet known in a lawsuit revolving around the Republican payments for actress and porn director Stormy Daniels not speaking to the public before the 2016 presidential election. relationship The tactic he claimed to have pursued in 2006 is a tactic that Trump also used with the Playboy model. Karen McDougal. These sealed charges (between two dozen and more than 30, according to US media sources) will not be made public until Tuesday, when Trump will surrender to authorities at approximately 2:15 p.m., as confirmed by his lawyers and the court. York will be tried and brought before a judge and “not guilty”.
But no matter what this grand jury decides, whether or not the prosecution finally approves that it will combine document forgery with potential violations. campaign finance Trump’s first criminal justice indictment, which is also the subject of three other criminal investigations, including a Republican 2024 presidential candidate and two of which is a federal investigation, has already filed a lawsuit to further aggravate the crime. legal and political pandora’s box of unforeseen consequences. And it opens radically in a socially and politically polarized country, where the Republican himself has already overturned democratic foundations in the past eight years.
Institutions and the system have so far endured these blows, the biggest, if not the only, expression of Trump’s refusal to accept the legitimate results of the last presidential election he lost to Joe Biden. Propagating the “big lie” he continues to perpetuate about a fraud that does not exist today, and mobilizing a naive base that stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Trump was about to block a peaceful transition of power for the first time. in the USA. And now, with the support of other Republicans and conservative media, he’s turned entirely to following the attack.
Politicized justice or just justice?
Trump and his allies assignment like a politically motivated witch hunt. They condemn the call, demonstrating that justice is supposedly used as a weapon by Democrats. “deep state”. With this they confirm that they are trying to stop their candidacy and “interfere” in the elections. everything blows that further undermine confidence in the law and the electoral system. And they also cite the prosecution as a sign of a supposedly anti-democratic drift in what they call the “radical left” in the US under the Democrats. Trump directly assures that the country has become “a country”. third world nation“.
Contrary to these arguments, it is ensured that justice simply follows its path and pursues potential crimes, regardless of its author being the most powerful person on the planet for four years. Trump’s accusation, viewed from this perspective, is the so-calledNo one is above the lawA necessary message of equal justice in a country whose prisons are full of citizens who have committed petty crimes. And other political figures, from governors to senators or mayors and even candidates, allegedly face justice without plunging the country into irresolvable crises or political violence. Even if it’s Trump, those voices say, it should be normal to be able to judge him. But there is nothing with it.
More charges may come against him as this process progresses, whether for electoral interference in Georgia or, at the federal level, for his role in the attack on the Capitol and for handling classified documents. As far as the feds are concerned, they can move forward faster. But for the time being, they have arrived in New York, and many see it as weaker. And legal experts believe they sit precedents This raises thorny questions. Who can guarantee that from now on local or state prosecutors will not be able to politicize their offices? It’s an idea raised in the pages of “The New York Times” and also put forward by Trump’s most staunch defenders on FoxNews.
a broken taboo
As Harvard professor and supreme Justice in the George Bush administration, Jack Goldsmith, told the ‘Times’, “whether the accusation is deserved or not, it crosses a very big line in US legal and political history.” And prosecutor Bragg and the grand jury have broken the taboo that has held American presidents on immunity for two centuries. gerald ford gave his predecessor a preemptive pardon Richard Nixonhowever, according to his biographer, he “preferred to forget rather than forgive”; water gate and social divisions. But Nixon was an outcast until then. Trump is the candidate.
The White House is quiet. Biden was asked about the accusation three times this Friday, and three times he replied, “I will not comment.” But the storm is already free. The impact of accusation is unpredictable, but the tension is already evident. The intensity of the coming days and months is felt. And one thing is already clear: the United States is being tested once again with Trump.