Trump’s conviction changes nothing at all

Ignore the teeth gnashing and champagne popping; Donald Trump’s guilty verdict in his hush money trial is the decision that decided almost nothing. 

Trump is a felon now, and, barring a successful appeal, forever. But while that may be notable to Wikipedia editors, it shouldn’t be especially significant to anyone else. What will prove monumental over the long term is not this preposterous moment in history, but the lessons Americans learn – or don’t learn – from it.

If Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case was a clean killshot, Democrats might have legitimate reason to celebrate an inevitable impending victory over their tormentor-in-chief. But the unmistakable political stench around Trump’s conviction – the only one likely to come down before November’s election – will prevent it from effectively ending the presidential race. 

After campaigning on his ability and desire to prosecute Donald Trump, Bragg directed his team “to scour the penal code for a workable theory” of getting around the statute of limitations for Trump’s alleged offenses.

In other words: a partisan prosecutor used taxpayer resources to implement his interpretation of the law, using the power of the state to target not just an individual, but the opposing party’s candidate for president. This perverse abuse of power rendered the trial that followed it a perverse miscarriage of justice well before the verdict compounded that mistake.   

While polls show that voters are reluctant to make a convicted felon president, the extenuating circumstances in this case – as well as Joe Biden’s putrid record and inability to run a vigorous campaign – are likely to soften this sentiment. Trump is the furthest thing from a saint, but a zombie conviction in deep-blue New York under nakedly political circumstances will be taken differently than a pre-election conviction for endangering the lives of Americans in the classified documents, or inspiring the January 6 Capitol riot would have been. 

There may be no doubt that Trump was prepared to decry the wolf of political persecution had he been found guilty in any of the cases against him, but it’s to his advantage that in this instance, the wolf is real. As wrongheaded as the events that led to Trump’s conviction are, however, some of his most slavish defenders have managed to overstate their case. 

Trump’s adoring future daughter-in-in law, Kimberly Guilfoyle suggested that what happened to him could “happen to anyone.” Tucker Carlson lamented the United States’ descent into the Third World while floating the possibility that Trump might be assassinated next.

One Right-wing media executive, The Federalist’s Sean Davis, even called on Republicans to begin drawing up lists of Democrats to imprison in retaliation. What happened to Trump – and again, there is an appeals process he is sure to take full advantage of – could not happen to anyone for one blindingly obvious reason: most people aren’t guilty of the underlying behaviour.

Trump did have an affair with a porn star shortly after his wife gave birth to his child before paying her for her silence amidst his 2016 campaign for president. That’s not illegal, but it is reprehensible, and his employment of Michael Cohen, of all people, to carry out the cover up exposed him legally.  

None of that excuses what’s been done to him, but it does reinforce the plain truth that Trump’s manifold and manifest character flaws played a part in bringing us all to this point. 

Moreover, Trump is hardly the first individual to be unjustly prosecuted and punished in the United States. People used to be lynched for their skin colour. Entire organisations still exist today to free incarcerated innocents. If those injustices didn’t make America a Third World country, neither does this. The American justice system remains the envy of the world; that doesn’t mean it’s perfect – it never was!

Partisans are determined to use the Trump verdict to advance their own narrow, shortsighted, parochial agenda in the lead-up to November’s election. For those who still put the long-term interests of the country above party, though, the most important questions are yet to be answered. 

Will the responsible Left, after years of prattling on about the importance of norms and principles (both real and fabricated) take a hard look at itself in the mirror after this? Or will it double down on what it now sees as a tried-and-true strategy, making prophets out of Trump’s most hysterical acolytes?

And will the Right, after years of championing a narcissistic reprobate, consider the consequences of his actions on himself and the country? Or will it double down on its insistence that when it comes to the Donald, fair is foul and foul is fair?

Perhaps it’s time America’s political class took a moment away from scrutinising the verdict to consider its own sins.