Angry Trump Humiliated as Effort to Prosecute Dems Backfires Again |
Angry Trump Humiliated as Effort to Prosecute Dems Backfires Again
A grand jury laughed Trump’s prosecutors out of court—but new details about these nakedly political prosecutions reveal serious abuses of power that are no laughing matter.
Let’s start with some good news: Donald Trump’s efforts to jail his Democratic enemies have thus far mostly been marked by ham-fisted, buffoonish failure. The targeting of people like Senator Adam Schiff, former FBI director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and six Democratic lawmakers who produced a video that displeased the angry, ailing despot have, for now at least, largely faltered.
Yet—after all, there’s always bad news in the Trump era—a dynamic has kicked in that is oddly helpful to him. Thanks to the knee-slapping, comic-relief-inducing nature of these failures, the authoritarian abuses underlying them risk being seen as less threatening than they actually are. That could potentially disarm us for the next round, which will surely come.
Case in point: Trump’s efforts to indict those six Democrats, who all spoke in a video posted late last year that warned military servicemembers and officials against carrying out illegal orders. After that video was posted, Trump raged that they were “traitors” who should be “ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL,” leading the FBI to reach out to the lawmakers to set up interviews.
But last week, federal prosecutors failed to secure an indictment against the lawmakers, who include Senators Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin and four House members. Indeed, the grand jury unanimously rejected the indictment—a major embarrassment for Trump and Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., a central player in Trump’s efforts to prosecute his enemies. As NBC News’ Ryan Reilly notes, it’s rare for grand juries not to indict, so the inability to persuade even one juror represents a remarkable implosion.
Yet details of how this indictment came together should caution us against letting Trump and Pirro’s pie-in-the-face antics........