Wednesday, April 05, 2023

Well past time to move on from Trump

I feel the need to once again trot out a quote attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald - "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."

OK, I'm not claiming I have any "first-rate intelligence" but I don't believe I'm alone in possessing these two contradictory thoughts: the recent indictment of former President Donald Trump is a political witch hunt and he should not run for President of the United States. 

Even one of Trump's most fervent critics concurs. 




First, the indictment. Former U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy underscores Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg's blatant abuse of power. 

The worst due-process abuse of Bragg’s indictment, however, is that . . . it’s not an indictment. The Constitution’s Fifth Amendment guarantees that Americans may not be accused of a serious crime — essentially, a felony — absent an indictment approved by a grand jury. The indictment has two purposes. First, it must put the defendant on notice of exactly what crime has been charged so that he may prepare his defense. Second, the indictment sets the parameters for the defendant’s closely related right to double-jeopardy protection, also set forth in the Fifth Amendment. That is, by stating the crime charged, the indictment enables the defendant to claim a double-jeopardy violation if the prosecutor attempts to try him a second time on the same offense.

Here, the indictment fails to say what the crime is. Bragg says he is charging Trump with felony falsification of records, under Section 175.10 of New York’s penal code. To establish that offense, Bragg must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump caused a false entry to be made in his business records, and did so with an intent to defraud that specifically included trying to “commit another crime or aid or conceal the commission” of that other crime.

Nowhere in the indictment does the grand jury specify what other crime Trump fraudulently endeavored to commit or conceal by falsifying his records. That is an inexcusable failure of notice. The indictment fails to alert Trump of what laws he has violated, much less how he violated them. If any prosecutor were ever daft enough in the future to accuse Trump of falsifying records to conceal, say, a federal campaign-finance crime, Bragg’s indictment would be useless for double-jeopardy purposes because it doesn’t specify what criminal jeopardy Trump is in.


While Trump expresses his obligatory outrage over attacks against him (though he actually owns the moral high ground in this instance), he certainly isn't shy about fundraising off this ordeal. As of Tuesday afternoon, he raised $8 million. 


Even though this indictment galvanized Trump's most staunch supporters, he still has no path to 270 electoral votes in the 2024 presidential election. This is in large part due to a likely increase in the number of Republicans who will not back him even in a general, and also how independent voters have drifted leftward the past three election cycles since Trump won in 2016.



 



And while people may poo-poo a State Supreme Court election as having any significant impact on a presidential race, Tuesday night's election of Janet Protasiewicz to the Wisconsin Supreme Court should alarm you if you're a Trump-kin. Not only did it change the balance of the Court from 4-3 conservative to now 4-3 "progressive" but it saw a resounding defeat of a candidate, Daniel Kelly, who was on record as saying the 2020 election was stolen. It's clear that many voters (especially independents) want to move on from 2020 as well as the January 6, 2021 riots. The fact that Trump still harps on those two sagas show how out of touch he is with the electorate. 





Short of being convicted of a crime in his other (and actually legit) legal woes or his literally dying, Trump is plowing ahead with his 2024 campaign. Other GOP candidates and voters alike need to come up with a coherent strategy yesterday to ensure Trump is not the Republican nominee for POTUS. How that happens, I have no idea. But the plotting and planning better have started. 


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