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    • Trump’s victory means the Justice Department will drop the charges. that’s a mistake
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    Trump’s victory means the Justice Department will drop the charges. that’s a mistake

    Sakege Posted on

    Donald Trump wants his criminal cases dead. We will know in four years if he won that fight.

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    Donald Trump didn’t simply win the presidency on Tuesday. he also prevailed v. US Department of JusticeTrump’s efforts to hold him accountable for trying to overturn the 2020 election and the classified documents he kept after losing.

    Trump’s two federal criminal cases, long legal slogs prolonged by his successful plan to delay justice until politics could save him, are about to come to an abrupt end.

    Here’s what else will happen: Trump will use the good faith efforts of public servants in a bad faith effort to again mislead Americans about why he faced criminal charges in the first place. He will present a legal victory won at the polls, not in a court, as proof that the charges against him were somehow illegitimate.

    They weren’t.

    Trump also faces criminal liability in New York, where he was convicted of 34 serious crimes in May, and in Georgia, where he still faces charges for his failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election there.

    Trump has a hearing Tuesday in New York for his attempt to overturn that conviction after the most politically inclined justices of the United States Supreme Court in July he injected uncertainty in all of his criminal cases saying he could be prosecuted but had immunity for any actions taken in his official capacity as president.

    His sentence in that case is scheduled for November 26. He is a criminal. And he is not president. Not yet. We have a verdict. We should get a sentence too.

    Federal investigations into Trump will disappear immediately

    Jack Smith, the special prosecutor leading both federal cases, is supposedly developing plans to close cases earlier Trump will take office in 10 weeks.

    That’s a mistake. And I understand why Smith is doing it. The special counsel and attorney general of the United States, Merrick Garland, who named him two years agoThey revere the Department of Justice as an institution. They probably think this protects the department.

    It does the opposite. I’m not saying the federal cases against Trump should continue. That’s a recipe for chaos. And we will not lack chaos. What matters here is who ends the cases and how.

    The department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued a memorandum 51 years ago and reaffirmed it in 2000that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted for federal crimes. So Smith is following a long-standing precedent. But doing so could call into question the functioning of the department.

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    The Trump campaign is already using Smith’s planning to attack Smith, the department, and the very notion of justice. Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said Wednesday“It is now very clear that Americans want to immediately end the militarization of our justice system.”

    That is the Trump campaign that uses justice as a weapon against the Department of Justice. Winning an election is not the same as being found innocent by a jury of your peers. But that’s how Trump wants you to see the world. He is politically motivated to lie when he claims that the cases were politically motivated.

    It makes sense for Smith to leave his position before Trump takes his. Trump bragged about how anxious he was fire special prosecutor if he won the elections. But the way Smith leaves makes a difference.

    Trump will rush to weaponize the Justice Department. Make him take ownership of that.

    Trump is picking a new attorney general and has repeatedly promised to use that person and the Justice Department. to punish people he considers political enemies for simply opposing him. But first, that person should have the responsibility of closing the criminal cases against Trump.

    Make Trump and his new attorney general own that, in public, forever. Relate that act to your entire litany of false complaints about how persecuted you are, and accumulate the evidence that proves the exact opposite.

    Smith should memorialize both cases in writing, detailing every piece of evidence, every word of testimony, every point about the illegal behavior we all saw Trump engage in.

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    That includes his case in Washington, DC, where Trump was being held accountable for his actions before, during and after the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

    Smith asked the judge in that case on Friday. to clear all established deadlines in how it advances, in what seems to be the prelude to its end.

    Expect something similar for the case in Florida that Smith had been trying to revive in an appeals court after a Trump-appointed judge in July. granted him a get out of jail free card for retaining classified documents after leaving office and refusing to return them.

    Present everything to the court. Leave a complete and solid record. Let’s not let these cases disappear. Have Trump’s team kill them in public.

    Trump did a masterful job avoiding justice

    Trump, a former president with Secret Service protection, never seemed to me to be in danger of facing a prison sentence for his conviction in New York for running a real estate business plagued by fraud. It was a financial crime. The judge should impose a staggering financial penalty and a significant sentence of probation.

    Four years sounds good.

    Georgia is more complicated, again because of Trump tactics to delay the process until the election results could insulate him from responsibility. Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney handling that case, has failed repeatedly while trying to push him forward.

    He should push to file it now, which Trump wants, but only on the condition that he cannot complain in four years that his right to a speedy trial is violated if Willis or another prosecutor tries to revive the case.

    Justice delayed is not always justice denied. We’ll all have to wait to see if Trump ever has to face him.

    Follow USA TODAY election columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan

    Sakege
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