Smart conservatives unable to make the case for Donald Trump’s innocence in the documents case are instead throwing the former president on the mercy of the former president.
Here’s Marc Thiessen and Danielle Pletka:
A Trump trial would be one of the most divisive events in the history of our republic. It would set a new precedent — and create enormous pressure on the next Republican president to go after President Biden, his family and other Democrats.
Whether righteous or not, the decision to prosecute Trump has opened a Pandora’s box. It is in Biden’s power to close it — by pardoning his predecessor.
And here’s Rich Lowry:
What we should want to avoid is a pattern of legal retribution and counter-retribution. That would distort our legal process beyond anything that’s happened to this point, further subordinating it to politics and undermining public trust in it. Perhaps this prosecutorial tribal warfare has already been unleashed, but a Trump pardon has a chance of sapping some of the poison out of the system.
There’s just one problem with this, which the NYT raises succinctly:
When Donald J. Trump responded to his latest indictment by promising to appoint a special prosecutor if he’s re-elected to “go after” President Biden and his family, he signaled that a second Trump term would fully jettison the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence.
“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” Mr. Trump said at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., on Tuesday night after his arraignment earlier that day in Miami. “I will totally obliterate the Deep State.”
There’s no reason to pardon Trump when:
Trump would never pardon a political rival, for any reason, unless it somehow gave him an advantage. Everybody knows it.
He has already promised to set the legal process against his rivals if he regains the presidency.
Jan. 6.
I don’t believe that Trump should be bullied because he’s a bully. That defeats the point of defending American institutions against him.
But Trump is not just a guy who (allegedly) committed a documents crime. He’s a guy who (allegedly) committed a documents crime and who already tried to overthrow American democracy — and will do so again if given the opportunity. We’ve seen what happens when he gets of scot-free. Let’s not be dumb enough to do it again.