By John G0uida
Today marks the latest moment when the legal peril of Donald Trump’s past presidency collides with his very active presidential candidacy. Covering him as an opinion editor means trying to make sense of these distinct, and often seemingly contradictory, strains.
On the one hand, Trump is scheduled to appear in federal court in Miami today, facing a 37-count indictment that charges him with violating the Espionage Act and other laws. As Trump’s former attorney general Bill Barr said on “Fox News Sunday” last weekend, if “even half” of the indictment is true, then Trump is “toast.”
On the other hand, in the latest entry of our Times Opinion candidate scorecards, which feature evaluations by columnists and other writers, Trump received the highest score (8.2) of all current G.O.P. primary contenders. Ron DeSantis, at 6.1, and Tim Scott, at 4.6, are his closest competitors.
Our coverage has followed these parallel, and sometimes intersecting, tracks.
As a matter of law, the legal experts Norman Eisen, Andrew Weissmann and Joyce Vance lay out in a guest essay a road map for Trump’s prosecution. They identify four hurdles that will need attention from the special counsel: keeping the case simple, a good strategy against Trump’s potential defenses, beating a ticking clock and persuading the American public of the merits and importance of the case.
The Times’s editorial board also stresses that “it is hard to overstate the gravity of the criminal indictment” and notes that the actions described in it “underscore, yet again,” why Trump is “unfit for public office.”
And in another guest essay, Oona Hathaway, a law professor at Yale and a former special counsel to the general counsel at the U.S. Department of Defense, focuses on the Espionage Act charges and points out that “an ordinary person facing these charges would almost certainly enter a plea deal and spend years in prison.”
She also notes that Trump’s “own Justice Department vigorously enforced the Espionage Act, sending people to prison for much less than the actions described” in the indictment.
But then there is the somewhat different matter of presidential politics. In a guest essay, Damon Linker writes that “Our country has a history of lionizing outlaws — folk heroes who defy authority, especially when they claim to speak for, channel and champion the grievances and resentments of ordinary people against those in positions of power and influence.”
Just as Trump’s poll numbers improved after he was indicted by the Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, the indictment by the special counsel “could well boost him further, placing him in a position of even greater advantage against his rivals for the Republican nomination.”
What about those competitors for the G.O.P. nomination? In The Conversation with Gail Collins and Bret Stephens, Collins points out that “most of Trump’s would-be Republican opponents are dodging this whole, deeply startling, issue. Or pretending it’s a Democratic plot.” To which Bret responds: “Pathetic. As usual.”
Trump’s presidency was singular, so it should not be a shock that he is, as an ex-president and potential future president, blazing a unique path. In fact, what is “shocking,” as Maureen Dowd wrote in a recent column, is “how easy it is to imagine Donald Trump campaigning for the presidency from prison.”
– New York Times
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