On the day that Special Prosecutor Jack Smith formally threw in the towel on prosecuting Donald Trump, Team Trump was acknowledging that a member of its inner circle was selling access at Mar-a-Lago to those seeking appointments with the incoming administration.
Although the end of federal prosecutions has been obvious since the election, the formality and seeming finality of seeing Trump being invited to walk away from legal accountability in two trials seemed shameful. But the reaction itself was emotional, not a surprise or a logical outcome of reason.
It turns out that Equality before the Law is for other folks, not Trump. Indeed, Trump acknowledged only the just dismissal of unwarranted criminal indictment that he intends to retaliate against those who brought charges and put his defense team in charge of the Justice Department.
Still, it is not as if legal issues involving behavior in Trump’s circle, including state and civil counts and judgments, are going away. The disclosures this week that Trump advisor Boris Epshteyn, the guy who has coordinated Trump’s own legal defenses, was found by Team Trump lawyers to be seeking huge retainer fees from potential appointees in the new administration should serve as fair warning of what lies ahead. There was no immediate outcome of the disclosures.
We’re seeing jockeying among the hundreds of those convicted for January 6, 2021, crimes to push openly for pardons to start on Day 1 of the Trump presidency. The Trump transition team has refused to sign required conflict of interest documents, submit to FBI background checks and security clearance reviews. There’s a whole lot of lawyering yet to happen.
The legal warnings are there on the policy front as well. Announcement of threats to raise tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada to gain immigration help legally run afoul of provisions in the tri-country trade agreement that Trump himself forced to replace NAFTA. Legal teams are lined up over deportation policies, pardons, environmental and health law enforcement and federal employee protections.
International treaties and policies with NATO allies are on the legal block as well as the diplomatic over threats to withdraw support, as well as UN promises. Intelligence services abroad were reported to be weighing whether they should be withholding sensitive information from Trump and Tulsi Gabbard, his pick for national security adviser in what must abridge more than just protocols.
Trump, Protected
Armed with a favorable Supreme Court immunity decision that suggests anything Trump does in an official capacity will be exempt from possible prosecution, it seems apparent that the law is anything but a guardrail against bad presidential behavior. Armed with a two-house congressional majority, any idea that an errant Trump will run into another eventual impeachment effort is a non-starter.
So, we know that President Trump will be legally protected from serious consequence for almost anything he or his people do. It feels an invitation to push the legal boundaries on every issue.
What had never been resolved, though, was whether it was Candidate Trump and not President Trump who plotted and schemed towards Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol — not official presidential work — or how that principle might apply to a former presidential who kept boxes of stolen national secrets in boxes stacked in Mar-a-Lago bathrooms and ballroom.
Jack Smith and team are getting out before Trump fires them, presumably to issue a final report that at least lays out once again the prosecution findings and evidence in the two federal cases before an incoming Justice Department and attorney general can squash it. Knowing what happened and seeing evidence of the scheming to overthrow election results may help historians but is well short of forcing the main character in the story to face a jury.
The big takeaway is that to be Trump is to slide on accountability of all kinds — legal, moral or political. Sure, maybe federal officials took too long to charge Trump, or the Supreme Court turned out a bad decision or that Trump would have been the charges fair and square before a jury.
Somehow, we had believed — wrongly — that people must answer for their unsocial behaviors. You and I may have to do so, and even the wealthy will run out of appeals sooner or later. But Trump has a special presidential get-out-of-accountability card that we just saw played.
