Democrats have taken a big gamble in forcing Donald Trump to turn up at Fulton County Jail for finger printing and a mugshot, following the former president’s fourth indictment this year.
Never before in US history has a former president been treated like this, let alone one who is in effect the de facto opposition leader, and the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president for 2024.
Former president Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon over the Watergate scandal, explaining to the nation that he didn’t want to tear it apart politically.
Presidents following the Civil War even refrained from prosecuting military and political luminaries of the American South in the interests of national cohesion.
Democrats in this century have chosen a different path, the deliberate humiliation of a major political figure for contesting an election he lost and liaising with a handful of party officials, lawyers and bureaucrats to prepare alternative state electors if his bizarre legal theories ultimately stood up in court – which they were never going to.
Whatever the outcome of the four indictments in court rooms across America over the next few years, the Georgia mugshot will become the visual embodiment of Trump’s status as a martyr for Republicans, at the same time as it’s the symbol of his criminality for Democrats.
For many Democrats, the Georgia mugshot released on Thursday (Friday AEST) was the culmination of years of legal and political efforts to ‘get’ Donald Trump, for them the most dangerous politician in US history.
The four indictments were each brought by prosecutors with strong connections to the Democratic Party, especially in the case of New York and Georgia where the respective district attorneys had campaigned to prosecute the former president.
Naturally, Trump, speaking to reporters after his arrest, said it was a “very sad day for America”. “I thought the election was a rigged election, a stolen election, and I should have every right to do that.”
His supporters care little for the legal arguments. Trump might be a bastard, as the saying goes, but he’s their bastard, and in the US by the most prominent politician in memory who’s paid any attention the concerns of the massive lower and lower-middle class.
Trump himself sought to make the most of the ceremony of the fourth indictment, choosing to turn himself in to Fulton County Jail on Thursday evening, during prime-time broadcast hours, when he could have arrived anytime until Friday morning.
His campaign was selling US$47 tee-shirt emblazoned with his mugshot to supporters via email not even a few hours after he departed Georgia.
Could these indictments pave the way for one of the biggest political comebacks in US history?
So far, the polling isn’t auspicious for Democrats. Far from guaranteeing the end of his political career, the charges have successfully ratcheted up his political standing among Republicans to the point where he’s almost guaranteed to be the GOP nominee for president.
Next year’s primary season will be dotted with court appearance and legal arguments that will ensure the media focus remains on the trial and tribulations of Donald Trump rather than his GOP competitors who have been increasingly defined by their support for him.
After years of Covid-19 restrictions where alleged criminals were processed remotely, the Georgia process could have been handled less insultingly to a former head of state who still commands significant support.
Perhaps some Democrats are already worried the indictments won’t stick. Ironically some have started canvassing a novel constitutional theory that Trump may be ineligible to stand for president again because he allegedly participated in ‘an insurrection’.
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