By Rich Lowry
Tuesday, December 10, 2024
Jack Smith is on his way out, and we don’t need another
one.
While serving in Joe Biden’s Justice Department, the
special counsel concocted a novel legal case against Biden’s foremost political
opponent and would have been happy to try Donald Trump in the midst of the
presidential election campaign.
This was an outrageous abuse of the legal system, and it
was just one of the acts of lawfare against Trump and people around him in
recent years.
Now, with the Republican about to enter the White House
again and Smith packing up, the question is whether Trump will engage in a
campaign of counter-lawfare.
Let’s put aside the hypocrisy. The same people who
supported, or didn’t object to, the extended campaign of legal harassment
against Donald Trump are convinced that it would threaten the very existence of
our system of government if Trump used the same tools against his enemies.
It’s true, nonetheless, that the most foreseeable early
pitfall for the Trump presidency would be an effort to go after his
adversaries.
Trump blows hot and cold on whether he’s so inclined.
He’ll say that success is the best retribution, as he did on Meet the Press
over the weekend, then also say the members of the January 6 committee should
go to jail. On Truth Social the other day, Trump posted a rant by ally Steve
Bannon about how members of the January 6 committee, prosecutors, and judges
should know that “we’re coming for you.”
On a podcast hosted by Bannon, Trump’s nominee for FBI
director, Kash Patel, talked last year of pursuing members of the media “who
helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” although he later downplayed the
remark.
Unless one of Trump’s opponents has engaged in some real,
no-doubt crime, any attempted prosecution along these lines would be a very bad
idea: It would become an all-consuming political story, it wouldn’t be popular,
and it would fail as a legal matter.
Like it or not, the rules are different for the two
sides. When Democrats engage in lawfare, the media fall in line — Russiagate
special counsel Robert Mueller and Jack Smith were hailed as paladins of the
law, inexorably closing in on their target. Whoever spearheads a Trump
counteroffensive will instantly became public enemy number one.
On top of this, the public in November didn’t endorse a
new phase of tribal warfare via the justice system. As Trump rightly observed
on Meet the Press, people fundamentally voted to control the border and
grocery prices.
A new campaign of lawfare would be terrible for the
country. Using the legal system for political ends erodes faith in it and
unnecessarily inflames passions.
Besides, any abuse of the awesome powers of the Justice
Department is, ipso facto, wrong.
An argument that MAGA enthusiasts sometimes make is that
“they won’t stop doing it to us until we do it to them,” or, in other words,
political prosecutions can have a deterrent effect. It’s just as likely,
though, that another round of lawfare would make partisan justice an entrenched
part of our landscape.
The correct mission here is to save DOJ from its misuse,
not to repurpose it for a series of new abuses for different partisan ends.
Trump is right when he touts success as the best form of
vengeance. Whereas a lesser politician would have been ground down by all the
investigations, indictments, and trials, Trump used them to lend fuel to his
primary candidacy and to become even more of a legend by defying his pursuers.
He ended up defeating the cases against him legally and politically.
That, alone, is a significant achievement and a powerful
rebuke to those who weaponized the justice system. Now, Trump has the
opportunity to deliver popular results that will make him stronger and his
enemies weaker.
The axiom for Trump and his team should be “Defeat them,
don’t become them.” Trump did the former and would be well-served to avoid the
latter.
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