A wrong case for a wrong crime has just reached the right verdict.
Donald Trump will not be held accountable until the 2024 presidential election for his violent attempts to overturn previous elections. He will not be held accountable before his election for absconding with confidential government documents and showing them off at his paid vacation club. He will not be held accountable before the election for his elaborate plot to manipulate state governments to install fake electoral colleges. But he is now a convicted felon.
This speaks to the dark side of the American legal system: its inability to respond quickly and effectively to coups. But it speaks to the bright and hopeful truth that even former presidents should be brought to justice for common crimes under the laws of the states in which they choose to live and do business.
During his long career as one of the most disreputable names in New York real estate, Trump committed many misdeeds and frauds. Those wrongdoings and fraud began to catch up with him, including his defamation of author E. Jean Carroll after she reported his sexual assault and assault. Today, pursuit has jumped barriers from the civil to criminal justice system.
This ruling will not come as a surprise to anyone. Those who protest the ruling most vehemently know better than anyone else how justified it is. Trump's soon-to-be running mate Marco Rubio shared an X video this afternoon comparing justice in America to the Castro Show trial. This slander is even more shameful because Rubio himself strongly criticized Trump. “He’s a fraud,” Rubio said at the 2016 nominating convention. “He has this idea that he’s fighting for the little guy, but he’s devoted his whole career to sticking up for the little guy.” Rubio specifically mentioned the Trump University plan as one of Trump's shortcomings. In 2018, Trump reached a $25 million settlement with people who enrolled in courses he offered.
Eight years later, Rubio attacked the courts, juries, and the entire American judicial system for proving what he said was true.
We are seeing here the latest operation of the ground rules of the Trump era. In other words, if you're a Trump supporter, sooner or later you'll be asked to abandon every principle you've ever stood for. Republicans in Donald Trump's adopted state of Florida oppose allowing felons to vote. They used their legislative power to invalidate state referendums that would have restored voting rights to people convicted of crimes. But as vehemently as Florida Republicans oppose the vote. by Felons think completely differently about voting for Felon. Now that seems okay when the felon is Donald Trump.
What was served here is not the justice America demanded after Trump's plot to overturn the 2020 election, first by fraud and then by violence. Letting the voting public know that before Trump became a constitutional criminal, he started out as a dirty-money-paying, document-manipulating tabloid sleuth, is justice, not a particularly ironic kind.
If Trump somehow returns to office, his top priority will be to shatter the American legal system to punish him for holding him to any kind of liability and to prevent even more damning charges from being held against him even higher. It will. It's pending in state and federal courts. America can either elect President Trump a second time or maintain the rule of law, but not both. No matter how much name-calling, bullshit, and outright deception we hear from desperate sympathizers of the first felon American to be the presumptive presidential candidate of a major political party, we can no longer deny this.