On Tuesday, New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie delivered a cogent rebuke of the hands-off argument and declared that “fear of what Trump and his supports might do cannot and should not stand in the way of what we must do to secure the Constitution from all its enemies, foreign and domestic.”
His column followed opinion pieces in the Times by Damon Linker and Rich Lowry warning that the U.S. Department of Justice or others pursuing Trump could set a “dangerous precedent” and provoke future unwarranted probes of Democratic elected officials.
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Journalists, scholars, and other critics of those pushing prosecutors to let Trump walk welcomed Bouie’s piece—which reporter Dave Levitan called a “very clear rebuttal of all the we-can’t-prosecute-him arguments out there.”
Tweeting a link to the column, Adam Serwer, a staff writer at The Atlantic, said that “among the problems with ‘just beat Trump at the ballot box a second time’ is that the same people didn’t accept that the first time, they invented a fantasy for why it didn’t count. If the issue with criminal prosecution of Trump is his biggest fans not accepting the legitimacy of that… [they] won’t accept the legitimacy of any outcome he does not tell them to accept. Can’t get there from here.”
Others highlighted Bouie’s use of American history—specifically, the emergence of the Jim Crow South in the wake of the U.S. Civil War—to drive home his point that the suggestion that declining to pursue Trump criminally will lead to stability “is foolish to the point of delusion.”
Please see too Michael Cohen’s comments about Trump on TikTok:
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That’s why it’s imperative we set aside the Plan A of prosecuting Mr. Trump. In its place, we should embrace a Plan B that defers the dream of a post-presidential perp walk in favor of allowing the political process to run its course. If Mr. Trump is the G.O.P. nominee again in 2024, Democrats will have no choice but to defeat him yet again, hopefully by an even larger margin than they did last time.
Mr. Trump himself and his most devoted supporters will be no more likely to accept that outcome than they were after the 2020 election. The bigger the margin of his loss, the harder it will be for Mr. Trump to avoid looking like a loser, which is the outcome he dreads more than anything — and one that would be most likely to loosen his grip on his party.
Wayne Northey was Director of Man-to-Man/Woman-to-Woman – Restorative Christian Ministries (M2/W2) in British Columbia, Canada from 1998 to 2014, when he retired. He has been active in the criminal justice arena and a keen promoter of Restorative Justice since 1974. He has published widely on peacemaking and justice themes. You will find more about that on this website: a work in progress.
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