J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo
Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) talks to reporters outside his office about calls for an impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden, at the Capitol in Washington, July 25, 2023.
The long-awaited fourth indictment of Donald Trump finally came down on Monday night, and it is a doozy. The former president is charged with 13 counts by Georgia prosecutors over his attempt to overturn the outcome of that state’s election, including racketeering, false statements, soliciting Georgia officials to violate their oaths, and various conspiracies. Unlike Jack Smith’s federal indictment over the putsch attempt, this one also includes indictments against 18 other co-conspirators, including well-known Trump cronies like John Eastman, Sidney Powell, and Jeffrey Clark, as well as locals like Georgia Republican Party Chairman David Shafer, who served as a fake elector.
In response, conservatives have driven themselves into their usual fits of apoplexy. “Biden has weaponized government against his leading political opponent to interfere in the 2024 election,” said Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. “They’re weaponizing the law in this country. They’re trying to take Donald Trump down,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
Others threatened retaliation, subtly or not so subtly. “Whatever you think of the Trump indictments, one thing is for certain: the glass has now been broken,” tweeted Ben Shapiro. “Political opponents can be targeted by legal enemies. Running for office now carries the legal risk of going to jail—on all sides.” GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy made the implication more obvious, tweeting that if prosecutors are “so overzealous that they commit constitutional violations, then the cases should be thrown out & they should be held accountable.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene made it clearer still: “The Fulton County DA Fani Willis MUST BE REMOVED!!!”
Former Trump official Stephen Miller suggested local Republican district attorneys could retaliate: “A Republican DA could indict both Biden and [DHS Secretary] Mayorkas for human trafficking.”
All this can be safely ignored—not because Republicans won’t follow through on their threats, but because they try to do so regardless of what happens to Trump. Letting him off the hook will only enable future persecutions.
Ben Shapiro, for instance, wrote an entire book back in 2014 working up a “criminal case” against President Obama, calling specifically for racketeering charges, over the supposed IRS persecution of conservative groups (which didn’t happen), illegal EPA regulations (ditto), and of course Benghazi. When he wrote his book, Shapiro was something of a fringe figure, but I have no doubt he would have attempted such a prosecution had it been up to him.
Then there is the fact that Republicans are right now trying to whip up something impeachable against President Biden, as soon as they can agree on what fake nonsense to accuse him of. Greene as usual was first out of the gate on the very day he was inaugurated with impeachment articles relating to the accusation that Biden had done corrupt things in Ukraine, despite the fact that a Republican-controlled Senate committee had already cleared him of wrongdoing. Republican House members have since filed more than a dozen other impeachment articles, most recently for supposed business crimes relating to Hunter Biden.
The point, obviously, is to seize on the most plausible-sounding excuse to impeach Biden in retaliation for the same being done to Trump.
At bottom, all this is part and parcel with Trump’s legal strategy for avoiding conviction on his dozens of felony charges—namely, drag the process out until he wins the presidential election, at which point he can use the powers of office to quash the prosecutions. The conservatives above darkly speculating about reprisals are collaborating in a tacit effort to intimidate the entire American law enforcement apparatus, from county district attorneys up to Attorney General Garland. Participate in harming Dear Leader, they are signaling, and you’ll pay.
The problem is that there is no reason whatsoever to believe that deciding against prosecuting Trump will result in any lenient treatment from him or his conservative allies. He has already been calling for his political enemies to be imprisoned for years now. During his 2016 campaign, one of his core campaign slogans against Hillary Clinton was “Lock her up.” Trump was impeached for attempting to blackmail the Ukrainian government into making up a fake corruption story about Joe Biden, and then impeached again for attempting to overthrow the American government. The man is corrupt, vindictive, and shameless to his very marrow. The only reason he didn’t manage to imprison Clinton, or even bring charges, was because the Department of Justice was not yet corrupt enough under his rule to invent fake criminal charges out of whole cloth à la Nikolai Yezhov.
Trump won’t make that mistake again if he can help it. As I have previously written, he and his cronies are already publicly boasting about their plans to conduct a political purge of federal law enforcement agencies, fill all vacancies with loyal Trump toadies, and seize dictatorial powers for himself—after which he can exact vengeance on all who harmed him, from District Attorney Fani Willis to Jack Smith to President Biden.
The implication in prudential terms is the same as it is in legal terms: Trump should be tried with all possible speed everywhere he is indicted, and if convicted, punished to the fullest extent of the law.
