The broad cynicism that has set in about the rule of law is a genuine triumph for Donald Trump, writes jonathanchait
The first two years of the Trump presidency were dominated by a prosecutorial worldview. The political drama of Trump’s presidency was consumed with legal threats, and Trump’s presumed chief antagonist, Robert Mueller, personified the antithesis of his gangster ethos.
Pomerantz may or may not be right to question the refusal by his boss, Alvin Bragg, to bring charges against Trump. There are solid grounds for skepticism toward the viability of the case against Trump, and Bragg is certainly prudent to treat even a small chance of a not-guilty verdict as a catastrophic risk. But even granting that Trump couldn’t have been prosecuted, we don’t don’t need to accept this outcome as fair or natural.
We don’t need to rely on Pomerantz’s say-so to evaluate Trump’s culpability. The public evidence is very extensive. As a practical matter, these crimes turn out to be difficult to prosecute. Trump famously refuses to write things down, scolds his aides and lawyers from taking notes in his presence, and manically destroys documents. Some of the crimes that are documented, like his years of systematic tax fraud proven by the New York Times, occurred too long ago to be charged today.
The modern history of Ukraine shows the deeply corrosive effects of allowing this assumption to exist unchallenged. When a country gives up on the idea that rich people have to follow the law, the entire legitimacy of the state comes into question. Both the supporters and the enemies of Ukrainian sovereignty have understood for more than a decade that its very existence hinged on eliminating, or at least suppressing, the legal impunity enjoyed by its business class.
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