Trump’s N.Y. trial shows the justice system is working
Showtime, at last. The first criminal trial of a former U.S. president got underway Monday, with Donald Trump sitting at the defense table in a New York courtroom — and proving that somehow, eventually, our justice system does work.
Just hours earlier, Trump had been on social media hurling a last-ditch salvo of invective in his attempt to intimidate Judge Juan Merchan and the state of New York from holding him accountable.
It didn’t work. Merchan’s first order of business was to deny a motion by Trump’s lawyers that he remove himself from the case. Merchan ruled that the demand was filled with “innuendos and unsupported speculation” and said ethics rules mandate that a judge is “obligated not to recuse himself when it’s not called for.”
Thank you, your honor, for not letting yourself be bullied. Thanks also to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for being prepared to move ahead with this prosecution after Trump’s three other trials — two on federal charges, one on state charges in Georgia — got delayed.
Trump is wrong, of course, when he claims that all his legal woes are only meant to damage his prospects against President Joe Biden in November. Anyone who’s paid attention to Trump’s political trajectory should seriously doubt that even multiple convictions would have much impact one way or the other. ‘Shame” has no meaning in the Trump political universe.
Trump is right about the “rigged,” “two-tiered” justice system. But it’s rigged in favor of people like him— defendants who are rich, famous and powerful.
Some bemoan that this New York case— stemming from a hush money payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election, allegedly disguised in an illegal manner — is the first to go to trial. The allegations are hardly trivial: Trump squelched embarrassing information that might have impacted the outcome of his race against Hillary Clinton. That could be called “election interference.”
Yes, the charges in the other cases involve weightier matters of state: the role Trump played in plotting to overthrow the 2020 election and inspiring the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection; the role he played in trying to reverse the election result in the Georgia specifically; and his alleged unlawful hoarding of highly sensitive classified document.
But why are those trials delayed? Because Trump took advantage of our two-tiered justice system to slow them down.
Attorney General Merrick Garland waited far too long to even begin an investigation of Trump’s possible culpability. Once charges were brought, though, Trump had the money to hire phalanxes of lawyers who filed motion after motion to slow everything down. When the trial judge ruled against novel and fanciful legal arguments, Trump could pay his lawyers to appeal and appeal again.
Likewise, in the classified documents case, Trump has employed lawyers to gum up the works with a blizzard of pretrial motions. It also happens that the inexperienced judge presiding over that case was appointed by Trump - an advantage no other defendant has had.
In Georgia, Trump had the wherewithal to hire lawyers who investigated the prosecutors and discovered a personal relationship they could paint as a conflict of interest. No overworked public defender would have done that.
And how has Trump used all this time? To viciously attack judges, prosecutors and potential jurors who dare to hold him accountable. He has defied the spirit and possibly the letter of gag orders. Another defendant would have been fined or jailed.
But the system is finally working, and the trial has begun. Whether he’s convicted or acquitted, that sounds like justice.
Trump is right about the “rigged,” “two-tiered” justice system. But it’s rigged in favor of people like him— defendants who are rich, famous and powerful.