ROGER KIMBALL: Trump inherited a weaponized justice system.
The press is full of caterwauling headlines about Trump’s “vindictive,” “weaponized” prosecutions. But if you step back, such imprecations ring hollow. For one thing, as the commentator “Cynical Publius” noted: “[Letitia] James charged Trump with nonsense; Trump charged James with a verifiable crime.” The same is true of [James] Comey. The same will be true of the rogues’ gallery of anti-Trumpists destined for the courts.
After she got done running for office on a platform of suing Trump and calling him “illegitimate,” James dusted off her oratory. “When powerful people cheat to get better loans,” she intoned, “it comes at the expense of hardworking people. Everyday Americans cannot lie to a bank to get a mortgage, and if they did, our government would throw the book at them. There simply cannot be different rules for different people.”
That was before it was revealed that James lied to a bank to get a lower interest rate on a mortgage.
Here is the moral of the story. Deterrence works only because there lurks in the background a credible threat of retaliation. Before Trump, Republicans were too lily-livered to mount any such threat. Would it be better if an incoming administration did not set about indicting its predecessors? Yes. Which is why the President’s vigorous effort to call to account those who waged lawfare against him is a necessary purgative. If vigorously pursued, it may just reset the conventions and courtesies of our political life.
Evergreen:
