Trump’s Desperate, Dangerous Attacks on the Rule of Law
It’s civics 101: The rule of law is the foundation of our safety, freedoms, and economy.
NOW THAT A JURY HAS CONVICTED DONALD TRUMP on 34 felony counts, he has aimed his vengeance-driven, full-force fusillade directly at the rule of law. Beginning immediately after the guilty verdicts, he and his sycophants in the Republican party unloaded on our system of justice, screeching out that it is time for revenge. The administration of justice, they falsely claim, has been “weaponized” and used as a “cudgel” like in “a banana republic.”
That’s what a party does when it has no moral compass and is willing to follow its leader, lemming-like, over the cliff. And that’s what someone desperate like Trump does when he is staring down the barrel of his lifelong nemesis: accountability. No one is above the law.
His only escape is to win the presidency. But the latest poll shows that almost half the country, including 52 percent of independents, think he should drop out. And he can’t just attack a unanimous verdict of guilty on all counts by claiming twelve ordinary citizens just didn’t get it.
And so he and his allies are striking at the rule of law itself. But in doing so they risk damaging much more than our justice system. The rule of law is the foundation of our safety, freedom, and economic growth; in attacking it, Trump endangers all three.
Let’s discuss each in turn.
Our safety.
If the rules of society break down at the hands of a would-be autocrat who believes that might makes right, our future is one of violence. There is no guarantee of safety under a despot who speaks of revenge and retribution, who feels freed from the law’s constraints and who controls state power and paramilitary groups ready to enforce obedience by fist and firearm.
The evidence is in front of our noses. Trump just said the country will be at a “breaking point” if he is sentenced to time in jail. He’s willing to threaten us with violence in his effort to stay out of jail.
His fanbase has taken the cue and, per NBC News, “called for riots” after the conviction. No one should forget how, before the last presidential election, he sent permission straight to the Proud Boys over the air waves: “Stand back and stand by.” They did, and led the violent January 6th Capitol invasion.
The history of autocracy tells us that it is as often a strongman’s brownshirts, not the leader himself, who use brute force against those whom he signals are his enemies. The lights are flashing red right now on the web among Trump supporters.
The past, Yale professor Jason Stanley has noted, is riddled with examples of people not believing the rhetoric of would-be authoritarians. “Believe what they say,” Stanley told the Associated Press. “He’s literally telling you he’s going to use the apparatus of the state to target his political opponents.”
So when Trump says he wants to be a dictator on Day One and when he floats the idea of an anti-constitutional third term if he wins a second, take him at his word.
Our freedoms.
All our freedoms are tied to the law, and to the notion that everyone, including a former president, is accountable for violating it. If that concept goes, so go our rights to speak freely and criticize leaders without being jailed; to be free from violence or theft at the hands of the powerful; and to have privacy from the government in our homes and bedrooms, including regarding our reproductive freedom.
On that front, experts warn that Trump could turn the high tech of the foreign intelligence surveillance machinery against his domestic enemies. (No wonder he was booed so vigorously at the Libertarian Party convention.)
For now, the long-established American system of due process protects all of us. In Trump’s Manhattan trial, he, like any other citizen, was the beneficiary of:
the presumption of innocence;
the requirement that prosecutors prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt to the satisfaction of twelve randomly chosen citizens;
the right to representation by counsel, and his expensive lawyers cross-examined witnesses vigorously;
the right to call witnesses, as he did; and
the right not to testify, and he didn’t.
He had the added benefit of a judge, New York trial court Justice Juan Merchan, who bent over backwards to avoid jailing him when his serial abuses of a court order forbidding him from attacking the jury or witnesses would have had any other defendant behind bars. Significantly, an appellate court rejected Trump’s untenable claim that Justice Merchan could not rule fairly in the case. Having lost in the courts, Trump, along with his allies, attacks them, seeking to undermine the people’s trust in the administration of justice.
Our economic system.
Capitalism’s durability, too, depends on the rule of law; without it, the stability and credibility that are the prerequisites of our economic system would be impossible.
Law professors David and Daniel Barnhizer summarized it well:
The Rule of Law in the Western democracies represents the collection of deeper cultural values within which the dynamic activity takes place and operates as a facilitator, governor and definer of the economic activity by which power is distributed and social goods created and shared.
Were we to replace the rule of law with the impulsive will of an unpredictable leader, the risk of killing the goose that lays the golden would be enormous. To put the matter simply, capital flees an unstable system in which might makes right.
And if the rules that are meant to keep the marketplace honest disappear, consumers will lose their ability to rely on the word of sellers. Favoritism, unreliability, and outbreaks of violence are not the nesting grounds of commerce. Often, however, they line the pockets of a despotic ruler and his oligarchs. Witness Putin’s Russia.
TRUMP’S “ATTACKS ON THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM have a long history,” Rutgers University political science professor Lisa Miller told ABC News last week. They must be understood as “part of a larger strategy to undermine the legitimacy of any aspect of the political system or process that criticizes him or tries to hold him accountable for his actions.”
At long last the legal system is doing that. Trump’s criminal conviction is not a one-off: Don’t forget two jury verdicts against him in defamation suits brought by E. Jean Carroll for lying about her, with judgments totaling $88 million. Or his $464 million judgment in the civil fraud lawsuit brought by New York attorney general Letitia James for Trump’s lying to lenders. Or the Trump Organization’s criminal conviction for running a 15-year tax fraud scheme for its lies to state tax authorities.
These rulings mark just the beginning of legal accountability for Trump, but they will end if he is re-elected. The courts are not coming to save us. Voting and getting others to vote because the rule of law is at risk—and with it our safety, our freedoms, and our economy—is the power we have to preserve them.
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