As a follow-up to yesterday's post, from The Shovel
We are certainly no fans of Donald Trump--let’s make that clear from the outset. But yesterday’s raid by the FBI on the home of a former president sets a dangerous precedent.
A precedent which now means that anyone who evades taxes, attempts to undermine an election, sexually assaults women, manipulates the value of their assets, uses state resources to enrich themselves or aids and abets the overthrow of a democratically elected government will be subject to investigation. Is that the world we want to live in? Where anyone accused of insurrection can be subject to questioning from law enforcement officers?
It’s a slippery slope. Before we know it, regular citizens accused of defrauding the government, concealing evidence, manipulating financial documents, tampering with witnesses or perverting the course of justice will also be held to account. Or to put it another way, if we simply shrug our shoulders and fail to question the actions of the FBI, soon any old Joe Citizen who is suspected of ripping classified government documents into small pieces and flushing them down the toilet will be obliged to answer to law enforcement, as well as their plumber. Read more.
As Michelle Goldberg points out today in a post entitled "The Absurd Argument Against Making Trump Obey the Law", in addition to the predictable nonsense from the Rubios and McCarthys, moderate Nervous Nellies like Tim Alberta, Andrew Yang, and Damon Linker--she doesn't mention David Brooks--are wringing their hands about the implications. She goes on to point out the obvious:
What has strengthened Trump has not been prosecution but impunity, an impunity that some of those who stormed the Capitol thought, erroneously, applied to them as well. Trump’s mystique is built on his defiance of rules that bind everyone else. He is reportedly motivated to run for president again in part because the office will protect him from prosecution. If we don’t want the presidency to license crime sprees, we should allow presidents to be indicted, not accept some dubious norm that ex-presidents shouldn’t be.
This is what moderates don't seem to get: All they have is the law to fight against forces in American society that have no respect for it. If they refuse to use it, they are unilaterally disarming in a way that they will inevitably lead to the loss of the rule of law. We
Use it or lose it. We cannot be held in thrall by the threats of right-wing extremists. Fonts of conventional wisdom like Brooks--who, btw presciently thought the J6 Committee hearings would be a waste of time--should be doing everything they can to make the case to their still reasonable conservative friends that they must support the rule of law or all is lost. People in the mushy middle must come to understand that we're in a cold civil war that is becoming increasingly hot. There's no avoiding that; there's only containing it. Appeasing Right Wing paranoia hoping to avert backlash is the path to insuring the triumph of lawlessness. It must be confronted head on by using the full extent of the powers the law affords.
Again, Goldberg--
Trump shouldn’t be prosecuted because of politics, but he also shouldn’t be spared because of them. The only relevant question is whether he committed a crime, not what crimes his devotees might commit if he’s held to account.