Trump’s Learning That Partisan Witch Hunts Are Harder Than They Look

Trump’s biggest problem is that he can’t simply turn the tables on his foes. He actually stood credibly accused of criminal offenses, while his political opponents do not. A New York jury even convicted him on 34 counts of falsifying business records for channeling hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, an adult-film actress with whom he had an extramarital affair, through the Trump Organization, ahead of the 2016 election. Though he managed to escape a prison sentence for the convictions, he nonetheless became the first former U.S. president to be convicted of a felony.

In three other cases, Trump was charged with a criminal offense but escaped prosecution or trial through other means. The Georgia election case ground to a halt after judges suspended Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for improperly hiring a romantic partner on the case. The Mar-a-Lago documents case foundered after Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who consistently bent the law in his favor, claimed special counsel Jack Smith had been illegally appointed. And the federal-election fraud case, also led by Smith, collapsed after the Supreme Court invented “presidential immunity” out of thin air to shield Trump from consequences in Trump v. United States.

While Trump was not convicted of a crime in those three prosecutions, his role in the underlying events are historical fact. Trump did, in fact, abscond with classified material to Mar-a-Lago and store it in unsecured places. Trump did, in fact, call the Georgia secretary of state and ask him to “find” enough votes to win the state after the 2020 election. Trump did, in fact, lead a fraudulent campaign to overturn the 2020 election results, which resulted in the January 6, 2021, attack on Congress to halt the electoral vote counts. These were not “witch hunts,” as Trump claimed, even if the cases ultimately fell apart for other reasons.