“I’m running because far too often, we have two standards of justice — one for the rich and powerful and connected, and another for everyone else,” Bragg said in a video announcing his bid. “We must follow the facts wherever they lead, regardless of how influential the person under investigation is.”
In the years since, the idea that there are two standards of justice has been embraced by Bragg’s most prominent target: former president Trump. In Trump’s formulation, the issue isn’t that people in positions of influence are getting away with crimes. Instead, it’s that he — and theoretical others on the right — are being unfairly targeted by an out-of-control criminal justice system.
It’s an argument that holds enormous sway with Trump’s base of support and the broader right-wing media bubble that surrounds it. It is also an obvious extension of Trump’s long-standing rejection of any criticism, any investigation into him or his family. With Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts in Manhattan Criminal Court on Thursday, though, it would behoove Trump supporters and Republicans more broadly to consider an alternative view of that outcome and the other indictments Trump faces: They are a function not of some indirect effort to damage him politically but, instead, of the criminal justice system responding to violations of the law.
It would be beneficial to America if more Trump supporters entertained the idea that maybe he actually did something wrong.
One of Trump’s arguments in New York is that Bragg campaigned on throwing him in jail. This isn’t true. Bragg was one of several Democrats vying for the party’s district attorney nomination, a fight that became a brawl when Vance announced in March 2021 that he wouldn’t seek reelection. By that point, Vance’s office was already investigating Trump and the Trump Organization, including specifically around the payment made to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels right before the 2016 election. Before the election, Vance’s office brought criminal charges against the Trump Organization and its CFO.
The idea that the incoming D.A. might prosecute Trump came up repeatedly on the campaign trail. At a candidate forum in January 2021, the candidates were asked whether they would commit to prosecuting Trump, a demand from many within the party’s base. The candidates demurred. Bragg noted that he had not balked at suing the Trump administration while working in the D.A.’s office, but added that a prosecutor “can’t be motivated by public passions. You have to be rooted in the facts.”
Bragg won the primary. His rhetoric in the general election was consistent, noting that he had been unafraid to take on Trump but not committing to prosecuting him. His Republican opponent, on the other hand, said he would “absolutely” prosecute, rejecting the idea that such a prosecution would be political.
Then Bragg was elected district attorney. Soon after taking office, a member of his team resigned, criticizing Bragg for not bringing charges on filing false business records and suggesting that the probe had ended. This was interpreted as a sign that Trump was off the hook, but Bragg’s office told reporters that the investigation was ongoing. As, obviously, it was.
When the indictment dropped last year, it was met with confusion: This was what they were charging Trump with? Some odd charge about how the repayment of the hush money payment was logged in the Trump Organization’s books?
Writing for the New York Times, Rebecca Roiphe, a former member of the D.A.’s office, defended the charges.
“[T]he case is about preventing wealthy people from using their businesses to commit crimes and hide from accountability,” she wrote — a particularly important issue in Manhattan. “Lawmakers in New York, the financial capital of the world, consider access to markets and industry in New York a privilege for businesspeople. It is a felony to abuse that privilege by doctoring records to commit or conceal crimes, even if the businessman never accomplishes the goal and even if the false records never see the light of day.”
In other words, the charges are centered on accountability for “the rich and powerful and connected,” as Bragg put it in his campaign announcement.
Nor were the charges exotic. Thousands of others, including hundreds in Manhattan, had faced the same charge since 2015. While some Trump defenders complained that the charges were brought in Manhattan, a place that voted heavily against Trump in both 2016 and 2020, there was an obvious reason they were: It’s where the fraudulent business records were created.
Adjudicating this particular case makes sense in the immediate aftermath of the guilty verdicts. But it is useful to consider the broader context of Trump’s legal threats.
The case successfully prosecuted by Bragg was only Trump’s most recent loss in his home state. The Trump Organization was convicted on 17 felony counts and paid a seven-figure penalty. Its CFO went to jail for tax fraud and, later, for lying under oath. That Trump’s business should be ensnared in legal issues wasn’t itself novel. Shortly after the 2016 election, he settled a fraud lawsuit brought by people who had signed up for “Trump University.” Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. narrowly avoided prosecution on fraud charges of their own — the escape that led to the 2017 criticism of Vance.
The list goes on. Earlier this year, Trump lost a civil case accusing him of fraudulent business activity. A jury determined that he was culpable for assaulting writer E. Jean Carroll. And of course, he faces criminal charges in Georgia for his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, in D.C. for the same reason and in Florida for allegedly keeping documents marked as classified after the government demanded he return them — and for allegedly attempting to obstruct the effort to get the documents back.
What’s important to remember here is that Trump’s claim that the prosecutions against him were rigged was not a response to what unfolded in New York. Instead, it has been an umbrella argument that he’s presented in some form since he won the 2016 presidential election. When news first emerged that there had been an effort by Russian actors to influence the election, Trump immediately insisted this was false and that the reports about those efforts were a Deep State plot to hobble him. This became the rhetorical framework into which everything else was eventually slotted, however obviously warranted the investigation or criticism: It was all political.
The Manhattan charges didn’t trigger claims that the system was out to get him. They were simply interpreted in a way that fulfilled that existing framework. Trump and his allies are experienced in such alchemy; the investigation into Russia’s 2016 efforts, for example, has been reformed and reworked so that misinterpreted text messages between two FBI officials are definitive proof that the whole thing was a set up. Figuring out the way to reshape Bragg’s efforts into something nefarious was child’s play.
For Trump, this has been enormously useful. It meant that the initial indictment in Manhattan propelled him to his third-straight Republican presidential nomination. It meant that Republican support for Trump was largely unmoved by the revelations presented during the trial, just as it was unmoved by the final report from the Russia investigation or by Trump’s first impeachment. It means that one could be forgiven for assuming that Trump being a felon won’t harm his presidential bid, though who knows.
For America, though? For America, this rhetoric is dire. There is lots of objective evidence suggesting that Trump is not uniquely targeted by his political opponents but, instead, uniquely dishonest among American presidents and uniquely vulnerable to criminal prosecution. This was the argument made by special counsel Jack Smith in combating Trump’s argument that he had immunity from criminal prosecution for things he did as president: Trump’s actions were not comparable with past actions by American presidents.
Trump’s ascent within the Republican Party took advantage of increasing skepticism on the right about American institutions. He ran with that idea, building power in part by ripping it away from the Republican Party, the government and law enforcement. He has helped build enormous hostility to public officials tasked with combating crime for the simple reason that that often means combating him. This means that he has more political capital to undercut federal law enforcement should he return to office and that any further criminal prosecution will be granted the same skepticism as all the others.
This all flows from one failure by America’s political right: the refusal to even entertain the idea that Donald Trump broke the law and faces criminal indictment because he broke the law. They have come to terms with his other moral failings, from his affairs to his dishonesty. But Republicans generally refuse to consider that those failings extend further.
Most Republicans, anyway. There are some Republicans who do believe that Trump committed a serious crime in some form.
Many of them plan to vote for him anyway.
