The Hill has a piece on the overall question that has to be on US Attorney General Merrick Garland’s mind….
Politics vs The Law….
Donald Trump HAS escaped being held accountable for his misdeeds ….
Over and OVER….
He’s trying to do it again….
The only person that seems to be able to REALLY press him is a Attorney General in New York State it seems who now has two seperate investigations going along with watching the Manhattan DA’s wandering criminal case….
…The prospect of indicting a former president for the first time in U.S. history would unavoidably plunge the DOJ into the political realm, experts say.
“Charging a former president would be incredibly divisive, could even spark a civil war, and I think that’s something that has to be considered before filing charges,” said Barbara McQuade, who spent seven years as a federal prosecutor during Barack Obama’s presidency.
“I would at least come down on the side that you have to charge this if the evidence is there, because despite the risk of civil war, the only thing worse than that would be to not charge them, to allow this crime to go unaccounted for,” she said. “One of the purposes of criminal prosecution is not just to punish people for past misconduct, but to deter them and others from doing the same thing in the future.”
Some experts say that holding Trump to account personally is the only realistic way to safeguard democracy, since the kind of national consensus and good-government reforms brought about by the Watergate hearings are difficult to imagine in today’s America…
….
For a brief moment after the Capitol riot, it looked like the country’s political leaders would come together to stand united in defense of democracy.
But Trump, aided by close associates, conservative lawmakers and media allies, has continued to falsely insist that the 2020 election was tainted by widespread fraud, claims that many of his supporters embrace.
And, aside from a few notable exceptions, Republicans have declined to forcefully confront Trump’s election claims.
“In this environment, with Fox News and Tucker Carlson, would Nixon survive?” said James Robenalt, an attorney at Thompson Hine and creator of a continuing legal education class on Watergate. “My answer is, I think he would.”
In contrast to the reckoning Nixon faced, Trump has largely sidestepped personal accountability.
Trump previously secured acquittals in two Senate impeachment trials and avoided an indictment after he was accused of obstructing the special counsel investigation into his campaign’s links with Russia amid Moscow’s 2016 election meddling.
Kristy Parker, who spent 15 years as a DOJ prosecutor, said there is an “extremely high” likelihood that Trump broke laws in his effort to throw out the results of his electoral defeat.
Although prosecuting a former president would be an extraordinary and historic step, it could ultimately help to restore faith in the rule of law, she said….
image…The New Republic