Indictable Boy

How to think about Trump's indictment, and what it might mean for next year

So a problem with trying to apply some kind of political science analysis to something that literally hasn’t happened before is... that it literally hasn’t happened before. No sitting or former president has ever been indicted for a criminal offense. And this one is running for president. Just how should be we thinking about this, and what should we expect?

I am truly not a legal expert and have no relevant knowledge or background on the merits of the case. (This puts me well within the norm for today’s punditry.) My assumption is that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is operating under the principal that if you come at the king you best not miss. That is, he wouldn’t do this without a very strong belief that he’ll get a conviction. And I doubt he’s naive about how he’ll be attacked by the conservative media, Republican officials, and random angry people in the street. So my guess is that he’s confident he’s got the goods on Trump, and that he views the consequences of letting this slide as potentially worse in the long run than the consequences of prosecution.

It is healthy for a citizens of a democracy to have evidence that presidents and former presidents are not above the law. That has legitimately been in doubt in recent years. Trump may yet evade this as he has many other investigations, but for now he is facing real consequences for his (alleged) actions.

As for the more political questions, will this actually affect the presidential race? My guess is, perhaps sadly, not all that much.

For one thing, note the short term dynamics of the presidential nomination contest. Basically every one of Trump’s rivals for the 2024 presidential nomination has defended him publicly. Ron DeSantis, Trump’s most significant competitor, has even suggested he would refuse to let a New York prosecutor extradite Trump from Florida. (No, this isn’t a thing.) And all this is occurring at the same time Trump is attacking those same competitors, dropping a $1.3M ad campaign against DeSantis. Does this sound weird? It’s the same situation we’ve been watching for months, where many people are running against Trump without running against Trump, and he’s not exactly returning the courtesy.

We can expect to see a fair number of Republican officials rally around Trump over the next few days and event weeks. Probably a number of members of Congress will endorse his presidential nomination bid, and some voters who were on the fence about him will start leaning towards him.

Here’s my best guess: Most of those people were going to end up in Trump’s corner sooner or later anyway. It was always going to be something -- a different investigation, the way a debate moderator treats him, a new sexual assault allegation, a sharp criticism from a Democratic opponent or a Republican rival, etc.

What about in the general election, should Trump become the nominee? Again, it probably won’t change many minds. As we have seen time and again in recent years, partisanship really is the main driver in modern politics, both in outcomes and people’s perceptions, and especially when it comes to Trump. Overwhelmingly Democrats will see this as justice, and Republicans will see it as a witch hunt.

Now, should this indictment be followed by another -- in the Georgia election case, in the January 6th case, or something else -- or even by a conviction, that might well lend some credence to today’s actions. It again won’t change many minds, but a small number of voters who might otherwise be inclined to give Trump another at-bat just might want to ease back. But don’t expect many.

A final thought here: Describing this indictment as unprecedented (as I did above) is factually accurate but not exactly neutral. Yes, it’s unprecedented for a former president to be investigated like this. It is not unprecedented for a man who has been involved in literally thousands of legal cases over the past half century to be investigated like this. Trump has a very long history of operating at the edge of the law, and this was a major argument against his nomination and election back in 2016.

Obviously the prosecution of a president or former president is a potentially fraught area of the law and should not be approached lightly. But to argue that he should be exempt from prosecution precisely because he is a prominent individual or a “symbol of the average everyday guy” is to say that laws just don’t apply to some people. Pushing the “unprecedented” argument may seem like an anodyne way to remain neutral but it’s actually a) taking a side and b) further undermining faith in the justice system.