OPINION
The view from the right on Trump’s conviction
Even conservatives critical of the former president balked at a trial that many of them saw as an abuse of the justice system.
By Carine Hajjar Globe Staff, June 1, 2024
In the hours after former president Donald Trump made history with his 34 felony counts, liberal opinion pages celebrated the conviction as a triumph of the justice system. The New York Times editorial board beamed that the “sordid case” was “proof that the rule of law binds everyone, even former presidents.” They praised Judge Juan Merchan for being “scrupulous in ensuring that Mr. Trump received a fair trial.” The Washington Post editorial board declared that the jury’s decision reminded us that “even the most privileged members of society remain subject to the same essential legal procedures other Americans face,” and warned that Trump’s “ultimate verdict” looms in November.
But while many liberal commentators celebrated the triumph of the system, the reaction in conservative media was quite the opposite. In a rare moment of accord across a fragmented movement, conservatives of all different stripes wrote to lament what they saw as the weaponization of the legal system against a figure that polarizes them as much as he alienates the left.
They weren’t perfectly unified, of course. The MAGA side of the right describes this case apocalyptically. And though an extreme example, Breitbart went so far as to declare to its Instagram followers that Trump’s conviction date fell on the feast day of Joan of Arc, “patron saint of prisoners and hero of patriots.” But sober-minded outlets on the center-right — some of which haven’t been friends of the former president’s — had clear-eyed arguments for why this case wasn’t a triumph but a perversion of justice.
That position was pointedly argued by legal expert Ilya Shapiro in City Journal, a publication known for its market-based, limited-government perspectives. Shapiro called the verdict a “travesty of justice.” “I say this not as a Trump-lover—I don’t love any politician, preferring transactional relationships regarding policy—but as a lover of the rule of law.” Shapiro contends that, feelings for Trump aside, the case was a legal stretch.
National Review (full disclosure: my former employer) sang a similar tune. That outlet has butted heads plenty with the former president, often pointing out how his populist agenda is mostly inconsistent with its traditional, William F. Buckley-style conservatism. But most of the big-name writers were in agreement: This case was politicized, no matter how you feel about Trump. The editors called it a “horrendous” verdict and a “textbook instance of selective prosecution.”
The Wall Street Journal editorial board (another former employer), which has been judicious in both its praise and criticism of the former president, wrote that the case “looks like a legal stretch,” describing it as “a bizarre turducken, with alleged crimes stuffed inside other crimes.” Though it pulled no punches for Trump, describing him as a “cad” and calling him out for denying his sexual relationship with Stormy Daniels, “if implausibly.” But it cautioned readers about the precedent set by this case for a “new destabilizing era of American politics.” “The conviction sets a precedent of using legal cases, no matter how sketchy, to try to knock out political opponents, including former Presidents.”
At The Dispatch, an anti-Trump online publication, the day before the verdict was decided, Nick Catoggio wrote in a newsletter that this case “has always stunk of politics, from the fact that it was held nearly a decade after the events that inspired it to the questionable legal theory on which it’s based to the dubious motives of the lead prosecutor.” Catoggio is far from a MAGA enthusiast. He has often made the classical liberal case for why not to vote for Trump, who he believes will oversee an “authoritarian nightmare” that undermines the norms of the American system even more than Democrats’ current lawfare. He even argues that a vote for Joe Biden is an investment in “keeping a fascist out of power.”
Center-right politicians were similarly disappointed by the conviction. Republican Senator Susan Collins, who’s been sharp in her criticism of the former president, suggested that this case undermines the American system of justice which “prosecutes cases because of alleged criminal conduct regardless of who the defendant happens to be,” but in this case, the opposite occurred. “The district attorney, who campaigned on a promise to prosecute Donald Trump, brought these charges precisely because of who the defendant was,” she wrote in a statement to a reporter for The Hill.
The reactions all call out two central issues with the case: that it was a weak legal argument, and that it was tainted from the beginning by political motivations.
On the merits of the case, they point to Bragg’s obscure and novel use of New York election law to bring forth this conviction. Bragg had to bend over backward to elevate the misdemeanor of falsification of records — for which the statute of limitations had already passed — to a felony, by using an obscure and rarely used New York election law. The Journal described this as a “Russian nesting doll structure” that “defies logic.” Shapiro noted that Bragg had to dig up “decade-old offenses that Bragg himself had previously declined to prosecute” and said that even with a JD and background in legal policy, this case was a head scratcher and likely headed for appeal.
There’s also broad agreement that the circumstances of the case — from the prosecutors to the judge to the venue in which it was held — were politically motivated against Trump, thus undermining the norms of the judicial process. Many have harped about the fact that Merchan is a Biden campaign donor, or the fact that Trump was tried in a deep blue district, or about Bragg’s campaign promises to go after Trump before ever trying the case. And Catoggio’s newsletter criticized president Biden for elevating the issue in his campaign.
The right might not be united on Trump as a leader or on his agenda. In fact, Trump might divide the modern right more than anything else. But for a brief moment, they’ve found unity around a question of law, and that it has been used unfairly against him. And with so many undecided voters this election season — including many anti-Trump Republicans — framing November as a decision between the law and Trump might just backfire.
Carine Hajjar is a Globe Opinion writer. She can be reached at
[email protected].
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/06/01/ ... ervatives/
