Trump case turns spotlight on US legal system

K. P. Nayar

Strategic Analyst

THE transformation of former US President and aspirant for the 2024 presidential election Donald Trump into a celebrity criminal defendant triggered an outpouring of jokes to the extent that they were no longer funny. They were scary. Political jokes gain popularity in societies where hopes of redemption die a slow and painful death. The Soviet Union was the best example in recent decades. Mao Zedong’s era in China also produced an avalanche of political jokes.

Legal troubles are not new to US Presidents. But when Bill Clinton’s legal conundrums got him impeached by one chamber of the US Congress, only to be exonerated by the second one, the jokes about his predicament were personal. A typical example: “What did Bill Clinton say to his wife Hillary after he finished lovemaking? ‘I will be home soon, honey.’” The nagging worry is that the Trump jokes, which are going viral after his indictment, strike at the core of the American system. They point to an increasingly dysfunctional state, where people are losing faith in institutions, which were once hallowed. They undermine a constitutional republic, which much of the democratic world has looked up to for at least two centuries.

Beyond the legal eagles stateside, much of the world is puzzled by the charges which have been thrown at the 45th US President for what he did when he was not in public office. Contrast that to George W Bush, Trump’s predecessor once removed. Bush is ‘loved’ by Indians, as former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh publicly stated in the White House during a visit. Public opinion surveys at that time confirmed it; only in very few countries was Bush not the bête noire for his various acts of commission as America’s Commander-in-Chief. By any yardstick of international law and human decency, Bush ought to have been tried as an international war criminal. Yet, he got away scot-free, while Trump, who will not be faulted in popular conception for most things he is now charged with, faces disgrace and imprisonment.

Or contrast the treatment of Bush by the American legal and political system to that of Bill Clinton, arguably the most charismatic man to occupy the White House since World War II. Clinton was made a lame duck for at least half of one term on trivial charges, which many people in any continent would dismiss with a shrug or a mischievously self-serving smile.

The treatment given to 37th US President Richard Nixon by dubious US laws and the so-called deep state was no different. Nixon changed the course of global diplomacy by his outreach to China, by signing the Vietnam Peace Treaty in 1973 and by creating a structure for nuclear arms control with the Soviet Union, which lasted until the war in Ukraine began. He also changed the contours of the domestic US system by taking the first significant step by any US President to mitigate climate change by establishing the Environmental Protection Agency. It was during Nixon’s presidency that man landed on the moon. The American system rewarded this transformative President by forcing him to resign, the only US President in history to do so. The crime Nixon allegedly masterminded would begin and end with a First Information Report (FIR) in a police station in many countries and such law-breaking would be soon forgotten. Spin masters in the US have ordained that in history books, hunting Nixon down to the verge of impeachment should be portrayed as a triumph of the rule of law. Yet, Nixon’s chief foreign policy aide Henry Kissinger has escaped being tried as an international war criminal for his genocidal actions in Bangladesh, Vietnam, Chile and several other countries. Instead, the American system has anointed Kissinger (99) as the éminence grise of the US diplomacy.

Trump’s electoral fortunes next year will depend very much on where new criminal or civil charges are brought against him, not on what he is accused of. If he is charged in a court in the national capital for the January 6, 2021, insurrection on Capitol Hill, it will make absolutely no difference to the votes he garners. In the last presidential election, he got a pathetic 5 per cent of the votes in Washington. He is unlikely to get any more since Washington is virtually a Democratic stronghold.

On the other hand, if Trump is hauled to a court in Atlanta for his actions to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia, his contretemps in court, his peeves about a political witch-hunt, indeed his repeated court presence in the state itself, may win him sympathy votes. This is because Georgia was once solidly Republican and became a swing state only in the 2020 election. The same logic applies to Florida, where the stakes for Trump will rise if he is criminally charged in that state for classified material found by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) at his famed Mar-a-Lago resort-residence.

Trump’s frequent appearances in a Florida court as next year’s election season gets underway will also severely undercut the state’s Governor, Ron DeSantis, who was pitted until last week as the frontrunner for the coming Republican White House candidacy. After Trump’s appearance in a New York court, DeSantis has already taken a back seat. The fortunes of DeSantis may further erode in Florida, and for that reason, political forces influencing the FBI may recommend that these charges should be filed in a federal court in Washington, where Trump cannot make gains.

Like Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who is now paying for tearing up the Manmohan Singh government’s election disqualification ordinance, Trump is now paying the price for systematically undermining US institutions — especially the Fourth Estate — during his presidency. The American Right no longer trusts the media, an institution which could have helped Trump in his hour of need. Stories and visuals of him in courts in New York or Washington will, therefore, only help him thus far. But Trump’s court appearances, accompanied by support rallies, in swing states will get him sympathy votes beyond his Republican base. Biden is shrewd enough to know that and may not charge him at all in those states after all, denying Trump any benefit on that score in the 2024 elections. 

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