Advertisement
Commentary
12 ordinary citizens did what Congress failed to do
Twelve ordinary citizens did what the United States Congress failed to do. They held former President Donald J. Trump accountable for a pattern of criminal behavior designed to undermine the integrity of the American election process.
A blind, cultlike allegiance of congressional Republicans spared Trump conviction in two impeachment trials during his presidency, but seven men and five women in a decaying Lower Manhattan courthouse chose, instead, to follow the facts.
Hailing from neighborhoods the length and breadth of Manhattan, a jury that included a waiter, a retired wealth manager, an investment banker, a physical therapist and a civil litigator listened to five weeks of testimony from 22 witnesses and unanimously rejected the specious defense argument that Trump was the victim of political persecution.
The evidence was irrefutable.
Trump doctored dozens of business records as he orchestrated a $130,000 payoff to a porn star days before the 2016 election because her revelation of their decade-old sexual tryst in Lake Tahoe could have derailed his presidential campaign.
It was a clean sweep. Guilty on all 34 counts.
The first man ever to occupy the Oval Office to be convicted of a felony immediately resorted to his tired playbook, dismissing the verdicts as the result of a “rigged trial” presided over by a “corrupt” judge.
The Republican Party must decide whether it is a cult of personality or a serious political organization with a stake in the country’s domestic and foreign affairs.
The jury did not buy it. Trump’s insistence that he “is a very innocent man” and that the charges were engineered by vindictive Democrats collapsed under the weight of the evidence.
Trump conspired with David Pecker, the publisher of the tabloid National Enquirer and Michael Cohen, his longtime legal fixer, to “catch and kill” stories about his extramarital sexual liaisons, with the intent of corrupting the 2016 presidential election. Buying off an adult film star is not illegal; doing so as part of a scheme to undermine the integrity of an election is.
The jury rejected as transparently false Trump’s contention that the hush money was meant only to shield his family from embarrassment. His sexual encounter with Stormy Daniels occurred in 2006, while his wife Melania was pregnant with now-18-year-old Barron. He paid her off just days before the 2016 election. Enough said.
For U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and such far-right Trump allies as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina to denounce the verdict as “shameful” and “a travesty” and “a sham” is indicative of just how far the Republican Party has strayed from its traditional respect for the rule of law. How is this consistent for those conservative politicians who spend their time on the campaign trail endlessly trumpeting “law and order?”How are their protestations even credible when Judge Juan Merchan did not allow the jury to even hear that a civil jury last year had found Trump liable for sexual assault because he worried it could undermine Trump’s right to a fair trial?
Advertisement
Trump’s contempt for the rule of law and his defiance of democratic norms is the source of two other pending criminal cases against the presumptive Republican nominee. His perpetuation of the Big Lie that Democrats used nefarious means to steal the 2020 presidential election — an election that Trump lost by 7 million votes -- is the root of an even more serious criminal conspiracy that he instigated to block certification of Joe Biden’s victory, an effort that led to the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
He is charged, as well, with illegally removing national security documents from the White House to Mar-a-Lago where he cavalierly shared them with guests at his private club in Palm Beach, Florida.
Trump’s disdain for the law was on full display during this trial, the only one he is like to face before the election in November. He repeatedly flouted Merchan’s limited gag order intended to thwart the defendant’s penchant for attacking jurors, witnesses, court personnel and the judge’s family. During the course of the trial, Merchan fined him $10,000 for repeatedly ignoring that order.
This verdict is a pivotal moment for the nation. The Republican Party must decide whether it is a cult of personality or a serious political organization with a stake in the country’s domestic and foreign affairs.
The Congress — facing a host of resignations from members of both parties weary of its dysfunction — must decide whether solving pressing problems at home, in the Middle East and Ukraine take precedence over partisan bickering.
And, most importantly, the American voters must decide whether they have at last tired of the childish distractions of Donald Trump’s circus and are ready to resume the mature responsibilities that living in a democracy requires of us all.
