IMPLICATIONS OF CONVICTION

IMPLICATIONS OF CONVICTION

BY SCOTT JOHNSON IN 2024 ELECTION, DEMOCRATS, NEW YORK CITY, TRUMP PROSECUTIONS

The trial of Donald Trump on jerry-rigged charges produced the foreordained outcome. Trump was found guilty by a Manhattan jury of 34 felony charges. It couldn’t have been otherwise. This was a show trial.

It would have been more efficient — it would have saved a day or two in show time — if Judge Merchan had simply directed a verdict of guilt and sent the jury home when the parties’ rested. It would not have been more unconstitutional than having the jury pick from Column A, Column B, or Column C for the “other crime” that was vital to the case.

Instead Merchan let the prosecution run wild. He constrained the defense. He all but stripped Trump’s defense to the charge of federal election misconduct to which Michael Cohen had pleaded guilty.

He gagged the defendant. He excluded evidence that might have helped the defendant, say with respect to the allegation of misconduct under federal election law. He crafted jury instructions that adopted the show-trial theory of the case.

And the jury performed predictably under the circumstances. In this case its role was ministerial. The guilty verdict on each of the 34 charges was for show.

The show trial lacked certain elements of the Stalinist show trials of old. Most notably, the defendant did not confess or repent. He has not professed to accept the opinion of his accusers. He may even prevail at some point on appeal after the election.

But appeal is irrelevant. As in the show trials of old, the point of the case is political, not legal. Democrats have achieved their immediate political objective. Trump is now a convicted felon.

As if to put an exclamation point on this aspect of the case — for dummies — Judge Merchan has scheduled sentencing four days before the Republican convention this coming July. The finality of the verdict on each of the charges yesterday is only seeming. The show’s not over in this show trial.

The Democrats are guilty of every sin they attribute to Trump. Election interference — this is how it’s now to be done, with a strong dose of humiliation, a patina of legality, and the threat of incarceration. The threat produces an erotic effect on the Democrats and their media allies, but that is not the point. The point is to take down a political adversary. The point is the electoral effect — the point is political.

The Democrats lack confidence in their ability to defeat Trump at the polls. The point of the rigged trial is the rigged election, and not in the “who’s voting” or “who’s counting the votes” departments, although there is that too. The intended audience of the show trial is the few voters who occupy the middle of the road and could go either way in November. If they move them to one or two or three percent to Biden, as seems plausible and even likely, that is the point. This is the Democrats’ objective in the medium term. Intelligent readers can draw a straight line to infer the long-term objective.

Every metaphor descriptive of what is happening here falls short of the moment. “Crossing the Rubicon,” “sowing the wind,” and so on, have a remote and clichéd quality that fails to capture what the Democrats have done. In political terms, one might think of Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. But that is too remote as well.

One has the sense that Democrats do not fully grasp what they have done. If the Democrats’ show-trial moves only enough voters to swing the election to Biden — a not implausible outcome that is what the case is all about — how can the outcome be acceptable to the many who understand what the Democrats have done. The show-trial bears seeds of alienation, discord, turnabout, and violence. That is the point buried in the clichéd metaphors. That is the implication of the conviction rendered in the show-trial.