Analysis: The collision of former president Donald Trump’s criminal indictment with the presidential campaign could further undermine confidence in democratic principles and institutions of government.
America’s institutions have been attacked repeatedly over the past half-dozen years, thanks principally to the conduct and actions ofas the former president
Scholars, legal experts and political strategists agree that what lies ahead is ugly and unpredictable. Many fear that the 2024 election will not overcome the distrust of many Americans in their government and its pillars, almost no matter the outcome. “A constitutional democracy stands or falls with the effectiveness and trustworthiness of the systems through which laws are created and enforced,” said William Galston of the Brookings Institution.
For the past three years, Trump has sought to shred long-standing trust in the country’s electoral process, claiming falsely that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen. With no supporting evidence to buttress those claims, public opinion surveys suggest that Trump nonetheless has persuaded millions of Republican voters thatwas not legitimately elected. Election denialism now infects a large portion of the Republican Party.
Benjamin Ginsberg, a Republican lawyer, was working with the Bush team in Florida at the time and pointed to the different conditions then. “Faith in institutions was the only way you would approach that,” he said. “That is clearly no longer the case. Both candidates [in 2000] were going to accept the results no matter how fraught the situation. This is really different and unprecedented.”
Nixon was pardoned by his successor, Gerald R. Ford, and to this day is the only president to have received one. Early into his term as president, Trump consulted advisers about the reach of his pardon powers, and whether he could pardon himself in connection to then-special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Nixon asked the Justice Department for advice on this question during the Watergate scandal. In response, the Office of Legal Counsel said emphatically that the president cannot pardon himself. “Under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, it would seem that the question should be answered in the negative,” Mary C.
Two pending investigations, special counsel Jack Smith’s probe involving Trump’s role leading up to the attack on the U.S. Capitol and Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis’s examination of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 results in Georgia, are examining actions carried out while he was president.
Amar said he worries about the documents case because, he estimated, “There are 30 to 40 percent of America that would never think Trump’s conviction was fair, no matter what the evidence shows. They’ve made up their minds that this is a witch hunt.” Biden also is under investigation by a special counsel, for having classified documents in his possession. The facts of the case are very different from those of the one involving Trump, including the fact that Biden and his team appear to have cooperated fully with federal officials. So, too, did former vice president Mike Pence, who also had classified documents in his possession after leaving office.
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