What kind of country do we want to live in?

Suppose we have a judicial system that’s rigged, whereby politically motivated prosecutors use the power of their offices to indict their opponents, unjustifiably.  What’s the right path forward in such situations?

Right now, under our system of justice, the court system serves as the arbiter. The alleged criminal has the right to have his or her case heard by a jury of disinterested peers who are vetted by both sides of the dispute.  The jury’s charge is to determine guilt or lack thereof based solely on the evidence presented.

The rules and regulations pertaining to the admissibility of evidence are well prescribed, and the judge bears responsibility to assure that those rules are scrupulously followed on an even-handed and impartial basis.  Critically, if the decision goes against the accused, those rules allow for an appeal of the verdict to a higher court with the mandate to assure that the lower court’s rulings and instructions followed the law. Also important is the fact that the onus of proving guilt lies with the prosecution. Failure to satisfy this requirement precludes a guilty verdict.

The argument that “(s)he never should have been charged in the first place,” misses the point.  Our public institutions are filled with people.  We might hope that all serving in these positions operate with the highest levels of ethics and integrity; but inevitably, some may fall short and over-zealous prosecutions may end up happening.

Let’s assume for the moment that all of Trump’s various trials fall into this category.  Obviously, those who embrace this presumption feel that Trump should never have been indicted in the first place in any of these trials, but given that he has been -- and found guilty in two cases so far -- how should his supporters proceed from here? 

Critically, the decision to indict requires the prosecutor to present evidence to an impartial grand jury and for the majority on the jury to conclude that there was probable cause to believe that criminal conduct had occurred.  Given this finding by a grand jury, any summary determination to drop the charges would seem wholly inappropriate, leaving proceeding to trial the only reasonable and viable alternative. 

Do all those echoing Trump’s attestations that all his various trials are shams and witch hunts really want the charges that had been validated by grand juries to be dropped without adjudication?  And if they would do that for Trump, what about the next guy?  What’s happening in Trump’s trials aren’t unique to his situation. Rather, they will have a bearing on future trials for many years to come – likely for Democratic and Republican targets of prosecution, alike. 

Do those currently disparaging our justice system and echoing Trump’s claims of unfair treatment want to institute a different set of practices?  If so, what do they want to do differently?  The grand jury system would seem to be the first line of defense protecting all of us from over-reaching prosecutors. We should appreciate that a balance is required. Raising the bar for proceeding with indictments would mean fewer indictments, but at the expense of unchecked criminality; lowering the bar for indictments would offer the prospect of more frivolous indictments coming to trial.  The ultimate protection against that contingency, however, is the trial by jury, which is the right of all criminal defendants.

Again I ask, what would the critics of our justice system seek to change?  A guilty verdict requires a unanimous finding by the jury.  In some cases, the jury is composed of only six people. In Trump’s latest trial, however, it was a jury of 12.  Think of it: 12 independent jurors vetted by both sides of the case concurred on the guilty verdict for 34 counts; and yet the MAGA crowd can’t accept the legitimacy of this jury’s finding and move on. 

The reality is that we’re still in the middle of this quagmire. Trump is a yet-to-be-sentenced convicted felon.  By all indications, however, he seems sure to appeal the verdict, effectively delaying a final judgment possibly for years. What’s served by the echoing of Trump’s claims of the court’s illegitimacy and its lack of authority to adjudicate the legality of his past behavior?

It seems the only remedy Trump supporters want is to purge the Justice Department of Trump’s unnamed political adversaries – all Communists, radicals, and otherwise shady characters determined to destroy our country -- and following this bloodletting the wholesale replacement of these rapscallions with handpicked sycophants committed to prosecuting Trump’s perceived political enemies. The failure to appreciate the danger that this “remedy” would set as a precedent is staggering.

Debasing our system of justice offers nothing in the way of moving us to a more perfect union. In fact, just the opposite.  But this response to Trump’s verdict is just more of the same. It’s exactly what Trump and his MAGA supporters did after losing the election in 2020. In that instance, they rejected the tallies of non-partisan election officials and subsequently the authority of the 60-odd courts that heard, and rejected, the claims of a stolen election.  Now they’re running the same playbook in connection with Trump’s trials. As far as Trump and his MAGA supporters are concerned, the only outcome that’s legitimate is one where Trump wins – and only his determination – and his alone -- counts. How dangerous is that?

All of Trump’s post-verdict comments, of course, should have been fully expected, as his spewing of the same claims of victimization and his disparaging of essential governmental institutions and norms has been a consistent refrain for years.  While I had expected the right-wing media to continue to endorse and propagate this narrative, uncritically, I sort of expected better from “respectable” members of the Republican establishment.  Silly me.

At the top of my list for those most likely to be headlining in some forthcoming volume of Profiles in Sycophancy are a cadre of Republican senators, including Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah), J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).  All signed a public letter on May 31 that cynically – and erroneously -- blames the Whitehouse for Trump’s guilty verdicts and effectively commits to obstructing a host of Democratic initiatives, including the confirmation of prospective political and judicial  appointees put forth by the administration. 

That posture aside, I’m even more disturbed by this group’s implicit rejection of the Constitutional imperatives put forth in the Bill of Rights. I consider their  failure to accept the judgment of the jury as being legitimate  and their disparaging remarks about the judicial process more generally as being tantamount to a repudiation of the Constitutional principles spelled out in Amendments 5 and 6 in the Bill of Rights.  These amendments prescribe the role of a grand jury and detail a variety of protections to the accused, all of which have been accorded to Donald Trump. Trump has been afforded all the protections of the Constitution, but the hell with the Constitution if the process yields a finding that Trump, indeed, violated the law.

To say these legislators are playing a dangerous game understates the threat they pose to a judicial system that has served us well since our country’s founding. I’d like to say, “God forgive them for they know not what they do;” but in this case, they must know. They just don’t care. The names of these eight Senators deserve to be remembered – and they should be purged from the roles of the Senate. Here they are again:  Mike Lee (R-Utah), J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

Or perhaps I’m looking at the hole instead of the doughnut. The fact that only eight Republican Senators – eight out of 50 – might be taken as a sign that some of the cult-like devotion that Trump has managed to engender thus far may be fraying.  The presumptive reluctance of at least some of the remaining 42 senators who didn’t add their names to this letter might be a sign of some change of sentiment occurring within the Republican party.

If only. . . The latest turn of events has House Speaker Johnson committing to move forward with House hearings on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Special Counsel Jack Smith, “to investigate what these prosecutors are doing at the state and federal level to use politics, you know political retribution, in the court system to go after political opponents of federal officials like Donald Trump.” Just what we need.