The criminal indictment of former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump is historic and unprecedented. It stands for the principle that, in the United States, no one is above the law.
At the same time, from the perspective of protecting U.S. democracy, the indictment is poorly timed. It would have been far better for the stability of our democracy if Trump had first been charged with crimes connected to his attempts to subvert that democracy by pressuring Georgia election officials to find more votes, not to mention interfering with the transfer of power on and around Jan. 6, 2021. If prosecutors in different jurisdictions consider it improper to confer with each other on timing, then Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg should have waited for others to move first.
The relatively minor charges brought by the Manhattan district attorney regarding Trump’s alleged hush money payments to cover up extramarital sexual encounters do not target the core of Trump’s challenge to our democratic constitutional system. As a practical matter, they may even make it more difficult to prosecute him for more serious crimes.
