Updated at 7:45 p.m. ET on August 1, 2023
Earlier today, Donald Trump was indicted for a third time, on the charge that he attempted to subvert the 2020 presidential election. The indictment, filed by Special Counsel Jack Smith, accuses Trump of a conspiracy to defraud the United States by “using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit”; a conspiracy to “corruptly obstruct and impede” an official proceeding of the U.S. government and for actually partaking in that obstruction; and a conspiracy “against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted.”
“Each of these conspiracies—which built on the widespread mistrust the Defendant was creating through pervasive and destabilizing lies about election fraud—targeted a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election,” the indictment said.
The indictment is the latest entry in a remarkable tally of criminal and civil charges against the former president. In June, Trump was indicted by Smith on 37 felony counts related to the mishandling of classified documents, obstructing justice, and making false statements. (A superseding indictment last month added three additional felony counts against Trump.)
In May, Trump was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll. One month earlier, Trump was indicted by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on 34 felony charges connected to his role in paying hush money to a porn star. And at the end of last year, the Trump Organization was convicted on 17 counts of tax fraud and other crimes.
But that’s not all. Georgia prosecutors investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state are preparing a “sprawling racketeering indictment,” according to press reports. If they move ahead, charges might come as early as this month.
There was a time when even a fraction of Donald Trump’s record of lawlessness and depravity would have shattered a person’s political career, rendered his party ashamed of its association with him, and left him humiliated and seeking forgiveness. But that day is long gone, at least if you’re a Republican.
The GOP made its Faustian bargain years ago. Early in Trump’s presidency there was a transmutation; his brutal style of politics, his lies and conspiracy theories, and his corruption, which were once tolerated, became celebrated.
The base of the Republican Party fell in love with the Trump Show—with his “owning the libs” and willingness to validate conservatives’ grievances and resentments, his chaos-creating ways, and his capacity to shatter norms and channel hatreds. To his supporters, Trump is entertaining and cathartic, a “fighter,” a middle finger to an establishment they revile. Every criticism of him, every legal action taken against him, provides them with one more reason to rally around him. The stronger the evidence against him, the deeper their devotion to him and the more intense their rage at those who call him out. (After Trump was found liable for sexual assault, Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville said that the verdict “makes me want to vote for him twice.”)
For years, many people, including “normie” Republican lawmakers who privately wanted to rid the party of Trump, wondered when Trump would finally cross a line that the base of the party could not accept, when he would commit an act too sickening to defend.
That moment never came.
It didn’t come when Trump ridiculed a war hero for being a prisoner of war; when he mocked a reporter with a disability; or when he was caught on tape saying, “When you’re a star, [beautiful women] let you do it. You can do anything,” even “grab ’em by the pussy.”
It didn’t come when Trump made hush-money payments to a porn star or when he was found liable for sexually assaulting a woman in a manner that the judge in the case said amounted to rape in the “broader sense of that word.” Or when the Trump Organization was found guilty of tax fraud. Or when Trump was forced to pay more than $2 million in court-ordered damages to eight different charities for illegally misusing charitable funds at the Trump Foundation for political purposes.
It didn’t come when he made racist remarks about a Latino judge or when he said that a group of four minority congresswomen should “go back” to the countries from which they came (despite only one of the four being born outside the United States) or when he dined with two avowed anti-Semites.
It didn’t come when his campaign knowingly accepted overtures from the Russian government to provide dirt on Hillary Clinton, or when his campaign chair gave internal documents to a Russian intelligence officer, or when Trump effectively obstructed justice to hide what had happened. Or when Trump sided with Russian intelligence over U.S. intelligence during a joint news conference with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.
It didn’t come when he said he’d fallen “in love” with one of the most brutal dictators in the world, Kim Jong Un; or denigrated America to praise Vladimir Putin; or tried to blackmail an American ally, Ukraine, in order to find dirt on Joe Biden.
It didn’t come when Trump incited an insurrection. Or when he oversaw a multipart plan to overturn the 2020 election and prevent the transition of presidential power. Or when he defended threats made by the January 6 mob to “hang Mike Pence.”
It didn’t come even as Trump misused his pardon power to an unprecedented degree. Or when he obsessively repeated the corrosive lie that the election had been rigged and he’d won. Or when he said we should terminate “all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution” to overturn the 2020 election.
It didn’t come when Trump attacked and threatened judges, prosecutors, and Jack Smith or after Trump’s former chief of staff, John Kelly, said that “he was always telling me that we need to use the F.B.I. and I.R.S. to go after people—it was constant and obsessive.”
It never came, because most Republicans—some cynical, some too afraid to speak out, some cultlike in their devotion to Trump—decided early on to reject any evidence that would discomfort them, that would call into question their partisan loyalties, that would cause them to have serious second thoughts. Most of all, they decided to reject any evidence showing that their opponents were right about Trump and they were wrong. They decided that the awful things Trump has done can’t be true because they don’t want them to be true. This is their political a priori.
But it went beyond that, as inevitably it had to. Trump’s enemies became his base’s, and so did his pathologies. To every dark and ugly place he has gone, his MAGA supporters have followed, and they have dragged the Republican Party along with them.
All of this leaves America in a difficult and dangerous place, as the GOP has amplified Trump’s relentless attacks on truth and our institutions.
The most recent example is Republicans’ incanting the word weaponization in the context of the indictments against Trump. The former president said at a recent rally, “The Biden regime’s weaponization of our system of justice is straight out of the Stalinist Russia horror show.” (Mollie Hemingway, editor in chief of the right-wing publication The Federalist, went even further, declaring Jack Smith’s target letter to Trump “beyond Stalinesque,” a pronouncement made even before the indictment was issued or unsealed.)
On the day we learned that Trump had received a target letter for his role in the effort to overturn the election, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said, “Today is indeed a dark day for the United States of America. It is unconscionable for a President to indict the leading candidate opposing him.” He added, “I, and every American who believes in the rule of law, stand with President Trump against this grave injustice. House Republicans will hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.”
Not to be outdone, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis tweeted, “The weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society.” The chairs of key House congressional committees have parroted the charge that we’re witnessing “the weaponization of the federal government.” On and on it goes.
It doesn’t matter to these Republicans that their assertions have no basis in fact; for them, words have no intrinsic meaning. A party that once portrayed itself as a fierce critic of relativism and a fierce defender of objective truth now delights in debasing words in order to gain and maintain political power. Theirs is the ethic of Thrasymachus, the cynical Sophist in Plato’s Republic who believes that might makes right and that injustice is better than justice.
The effect is to sow distrust in our legal institutions. That’s the point. Delegitimize them. Shatter confidence in institutions and sources of authority that can hold liars and lawbreakers accountable. Manipulate people into doubting what is true. As James Poniewozik of The New York Times has put it, if Trump and his allies succeed in convincing his supporters that there is no truth, then they will be left to conclude that “you should just follow your gut & your tribe.” You can get away with a lot if you can make up your own facts. Donald Trump has gotten away with a lot, at least until now.
America has entered uncharted territory. Never before in our history has a former president been indicted, let alone multiple times, let alone faced criminal trials in the midst of a presidential campaign. But that is what awaits us.
In October, a civil suit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James against Trump, the Trump Organization’s executive team, and his three eldest children is expected to go to trial. In January 2024, the second defamation suit by E. Jean Carroll is set to begin. Two months later, the Stormy Daniels hush-money case is scheduled to go to trial in Manhattan. And in May, the criminal trial against Trump for stealing classified documents and obstructing the government’s efforts to reclaim them is anticipated to begin. No date has yet been set for Trump’s federal criminal trial for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election, nor do we know when Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis might indict Trump for his efforts to overturn Georgia’s results in the 2020 election.
If Trump wins the nomination—and right now he leads the race by nearly 40 points over his closest challenger, DeSantis—the Republican nominee will be a twice-impeached person found liable for sexual abuse and charged with multiple crimes. It’s not quite what one would expect from the party of “family values” and “law and order.”
The trials of Donald Trump will deepen the divides in a country already brimming with political hate. The more threatened he feels, the more he will advocate political violence. We saw what he did when he was losing his presidency; imagine what he’ll do when he’s losing his freedom.
Here’s something we should prepare for: If Donald Trump thinks he’s going down, he’s going to try to burn down our institutions. He will mobilize his MAGA base, his Republican enablers, and the right-wing media to unleash yet more lies and conspiracy theories. He will portray himself as a martyr who is being persecuted for the sake of his supporters. He will claim that his legal troubles prove that the system is corrupt, and not him. Trump and his supporters will try to tamper with witnesses, intimidate jurors, and threaten public officials. And he will try to cause enough confusion, disorientation, discord, fear, and even violence to escape accountability yet again.
Donald Trump has already deeply wounded our nation. He’s perfectly willing to break it. It’s up to us to keep him from succeeding.
This article originally stated that Donald Trump had been convicted of sexual assault. He was found liable for it.