Cornered

It's hardly news that legal controversies surround Donald Trump, as they’ve swirled around him for decades, but an actual indictment and arrest would, of course, be unprecedented. Trump has been a virtual Houdini in escaping accountability for questionable actions his entire life, and there is a strain of American culture that celebrates that kind of outlaw status for sure.

But it appears he has pushed the legal system to its limit this time around. Even so, the process of trying him — for anything — will create a greater strain on our judicial system than it has seen to date.

And there is more than one way to destroy a democracy than undermining faith in the electoral system. There’s undermining faith in the legal system as well.

Assuming an arrest in the Stormy Daniels hush-payment case comes first, which apparently is an iffy assumption, New York officials will have to coordinate with Trump’s secret service detail to even get him into a courthouse and book him. That won’t be easy.

Meanwhile, D.C. courts appear to be willing to pierce the attorney-client privilege in the classified documents case. That can’t be a good precedent to set, even if it is justified.

In Georgia, perhaps the most open-and-shut case against the former President in his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, the decision by the grand jury foreperson to speak out created a media circus topped off by a skit on SNL. More drama does not mean better justice.

But by far the most important case against Trump is that he incited the mob that violently attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6th, intending to disrupt the Electoral College process and thereby subvert U.S. democracy. This was a matter of treason.

At this point, no one knows whether Trump will ever be convicted of any of these crimes. Indeed, it is far from clear that any jury in any part of the country would be able to achieve the unanimous vote needed to convict him because a certain subgroup — maybe 25-30 percent of the population — remains stubbornly loyal to him as their outlaw.

Should this would-be despot escape justice yet again, God help us and God help our democracy.

Thanks to my friend and retired public defender Joel Kirshenbaum for help on this one. 

LINKS:

• The Manhattan DA's investigation into Trump and the Stormy Daniels hush payment, explained (ABC)

• Legal drama surrounding Trump reaches a fever pitch (CNN)

• Trump shares possibility of no indictment in hush money case (The Hill)

• Trump's potential indictment caps decades of legal scrutiny (AP)

• Judge rules Trump lawyer must testify in special counsel probe of classified documents (MSNBC)

• Why a unanimous jury will never convict Trump, even if he’s guilty as sin (SFC)

• Trump wants to be handcuffed for court appearance in Stormy Daniels case, sources say (Guardian)

• Trump called for protesters. They turned up and demanded his arrest (Independent)

• Sources: Special counsel claims Trump deliberately misled his attorneys about classified documents, judge wrote (ABC)

• Fed Raises Rates but Nods to Greater Uncertainty After Banking Stress (WSJ)

• A Big Question for the Fed: What Went Wrong With Bank Oversight? (NYT)

• Credit Suisse fallout threatens to halt issuance of risky bank debt (Financial Times)

• How the Last-Ditch Effort to Save Silicon Valley Bank Failed (WSJ)

• AI Loves—and Loathes—Language (Wired)

• Generative AI Makes Headway in Healthcare (WSJ)

• Google’s new AI chatbot seems boring. Maybe that’s the point. (Vox)

• Google’s Bard lags behind GPT-4 and Claude in head-to-head comparison (TechCrunch)

• Idaho hospital to stop delivering babies, partly due to ‘political climate’ (WP)

• Mark Zuckerberg's Past Comes Back to Haunt Him (The Street)

• Washington prepares for war with Amazon (Politico)

• TikTok's chief executive will tell lawmakers the Chinese-owned short video app with more than 150 million American users has never, and would never, share U.S. user data with the Chinese government amid growing U.S. national security concerns. (Reuters)

• Oklahoma must allow abortion if mother’s life is threatened, court rules (WP)

• Is this normal? California is facing its 12th atmospheric river this winter following a historic drought (CNN)

• A 5,000-mile seaweed belt is headed toward Florida (AP)

• Supreme Court divided over Navajo Nation water rights claim involving Colorado River (ABC)

• A Major Clue to COVID’s Origins Is Just Out of Reach (Atlantic)

• U.S. will speed transfer of Abrams tanks to Ukraine, Pentagon says (WP)

• Horrifying Email From Ex-Girlfriend Titled ‘A Few Things’ (The Onion)