Ripped Off
Special Prosecutor Jack Smith ripped the band-aid off yesterday. The Justice Department, under Smith’s name, dropped the charges against Donald J Trump in the Washington “Insurrection Case”. Smith did not say that his indictment was in error, or that Trump was somehow, all of a sudden, innocent. Instead, Smith cited that old internal Nixon Justice Department memo that states a sitting and now, an elected President cannot be indicted or charged while in office.
At the same time, Smith also asked the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to drop Trump’s involvement in the Mar-a-Lago, classified documents case. That case was dismissed by trial judge Aileen Cannon, after which Smith appealed the dismissal. The others involved in the case, including Trump aides and lawyers, are still included.
Unbalanced Scale
There is an old saying: “Elections have consequences”. Donald Trump is the next President of the United States. The United States Supreme Court already put their collective thumbs on the “scale of Justice”, declaring that many of Trump’s actions were immune from prosecution. The six Justice majority made it pretty plain: they thought that charging a former President was inappropriate, and probably, unconstitutional. And with a Trump appointed Justice Department coming in the door on January 20th, now there is no one left to prosecute a case against him.
So what of the 2020 election, the Insurrection, and the boxes of classified documents in the golden bathroom of Mar-a-Lago? Star Wars character Obi-Won-Kenobi said it best: “There’s nothing to see here, move along”. In fact, it’s reasonable to assume that early in the Trump Presidency, perhaps even on his first day in office, a wide range of Presidential Pardons will be issued to all those involved. Don’t be surprised if those serving Federal sentences for Insurrection offenses are not only out of prison, but somehow employed in the new Trump Administration.
Whitewash
For the next four years, the events of January 6, 2021 will be whitewashed. We will hear that those who stormed the Capitol are really heroes, standing up for a stolen Presidency. And in our current era of political “right-ness”, there will be educators who will tell our children a whole-cloth fiction of those tried to overthrow our Constitution, and the gallant struggles of Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro.
In the American South, the atrocity of white rioters destroying black communities in the early 20th century isn’t taught in most schools. Like the parents there, we will have to teach our children the true story outside of our educational institutions. The Insurrection will be another hidden horror, like Tulsa and Rosewood and the 1932 attack on the Bonus Army in Washington, DC.
And for those who hold out false hope that somehow, sometime, those indictments will be reinstated: that’s not going to happen. Even if, Democrats weather the next four years; even if our democracy manages to survive this crisis in authoritarianism; even if the right for everyone to vote isn’t subsumed by the government sanctioned onslaught of restrictions: it will never be politically expedient to revive this issue. It will be like the McCarthy era of the 1950’s, a dark spot in the history book, seldom discussed and never adjudicated.
Our Story
We all know what happened in 2020 and 2021. Regardless of the forthcoming “re-write”, many Americans won’t ignore their “lying eyes”, and pretend what they saw in plain sight didn’t happen. And even if there is no legal justice in America, we can still hope to save our Democracy. What happens in the next four years is as critical as any period in our history, including the Civil War. What story will we tell our children eight years from now?
When Trump was first elected in 2016, the leading musical on Broadway was “Hamilton”. The songs of Lin Manuel Miranda helped get many of us through the first four years of Donald Trump, and fueled the “Resistance” to his actions. We now stand at the beginning of another four years of outrage by “tweet”, and real-life atrocities. Yes, Donald Trump and many of his minions will never be called to the bar of justice. But what happens next is so much more important than what happened before. Who gets to “tell the story” of the 2020’s, of a nation so narrowly divided that we could turn from Trump to Biden, then from Harris back to Trump.
“Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?” We get to decide, again.
