How Trump Got Away With an Attempted Coup

The Georgia dismissal is the latest salvo in the profound corruption of the American justice system wrought by Trump and his political allies. This year, the Department of Justice has brought transparently partisan prosecutions and investigations for minor mortgage document errors allegedly committed by Trump’s political opponents, including New York Attorney General Letitia James and Senator Adam Schiff. And in an Orwellian turn, federal prosecutors are now reported to be investigating Willis, the original prosecutor in the Georgia case, for unspecified offenses, after Trump said she is a “criminal” who “should be prosecuted.”

Meanwhile, Trump and his Georgia co-defendants will walk free without ever having to face a jury of their peers for their alleged crimes. Trump has already pardoned his adviser-accomplices, including Giuliani, John Eastman, and Kenneth Chesebro, for any federal crimes they committed as part of his plot. (Full disclosure: I served as the expert witness on constitutional law in the disbarment proceeding against John Eastman, and the Fulton County district sttorney relied on my report on the unlawfulness of the alternate electors scheme in the criminal prosecution of Kenneth Chesebro.) And perhaps most shamefully of all, on the first day of his second term of office, Trump pardoned more than 1,200 people convicted of federal crimes related to the Capitol riot on January 6, including hundreds who assaulted law enforcement officers.

But neither Trump nor the Georgia prosecutor can pardon or dismiss the legal and moral truth. Trump and his accomplices tried to steal the 2020 presidential election. The means through which they attempted to achieve that theft was the manipulation of the legal system, from the submission of false slates of electors to the pressure campaign on Vice President Pence to interfere with the electoral count on January 6. That scheme was unlawful, regardless of whether its perpetrators ever serve a day behind bars.