Decades ago, people in Trump’s orbit, such as Roy Cohn and Roger Stone, taught him that rules are malleable, that winning is all that matters. Democrats, however, are by and large a party of rule followers. Despite being forced out of the race by his own party, President Joe Biden is still an institutionalist. There he was, smiling next to Trump, the man whom he had characterized as an “existential threat.” Biden’s courtesies, his adherence to norms, extend all the way down. Susie Wiles, Trump’s former co–campaign manager, said that Biden’s chief of staff, Jeff Zients, has been “very helpful” to her, and that he has gone so far as to host a dinner for her and others at his home.
Opposition party this is not. The Democrats are playing one game, and Trump is playing another. Trump is winning.
John Hendrickson
Trump’s Rule-Breaking Keeps Working (The Atlantic)
As Republicans whitewashed January 6 and the legal system failed to hold Trump to account, the importance of Trump’s attack on our democracy seemed to fade. Even the Trump v. U.S. Supreme Court decision, which undermined the key principle that all Americans are equal before the law by declaring Trump above it, got less attention than its astonishingly revolutionary position warranted, coming as it did just four days after President Joe Biden looked and sounded old in a televised presidential debate.
Heather Cox Richardson
January 6, 2025 (Letters from an American)
A federal judge dismissed the Jan. 6 election interference case against Donald Trump hours after federal prosecutors filed a motion to dismiss both that case and the Mar-a-Lago documents cases against Trump.
Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed the case without prejudice.
The move was widely expected. Just a day after the election, special counsel Jack Smith, who headed the investigations, began to unwind the federal cases against Trump: the first for clinging to power in 2020, events that resulted in the storming of the U.S. Capitol; the second for hoarding classified documents and obstructing FBI efforts to retrieve them.
NPR Washington Desk
Judge grants dismissal of Jan. 6 case against Trump (NPR)
There is little in the part of the report covering Trump’s behavior that was not already public information. The report explains how Trump lied that he won the 2020 presidential election and continued to lie even when his own appointees and employees told him he had lost. It lays out how he pressured state officials to throw out votes for his opponent, then-president-elect Joe Biden, and how he and his cronies recruited false electors in key states Trump lost to create slates of false electoral votes.
It explains how Trump tried to force Justice Department officials to support his lie and to trick states into rescinding their electoral votes for Biden and how, finally, he pressured his vice president, Mike Pence, to either throw out votes for Biden or send state counts back to the states. When Pence refused, correctly asserting that he had no such power, Trump urged his supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol. He refused to call them off for hours.
Smith explained that the Justice Department concluded that Trump was guilty on four counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States by trying “to interfere with or obstruct one of its lawful governmental functions by deceit, craft or trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest”; obstruction and conspiracy to obstruct by creating false evidence; and conspiracy against rights by trying to take away people’s right to vote for president.
Heather Cox Richardson
January 14, 2025 (Letters from an American)
Appearing in court virtually from his Mar-a-Lago home Friday [10 January 2025], President-elect Donald Trump was sentenced for his crimes in the New York “hush money” case and released with no restrictions.
Justice Juan Merchan followed through on a promise made one week ago to give Trump a sentence of unconditional discharge, which includes neither jail time nor any other restriction that might impede Trump after his inauguration on Jan. 20.
Graham Kates, Kathryn Watson, Katrina Kaufman, Shawna Mizelle, Nathalie Nieves
Far from expressing any kind of remorse for his criminal conduct, the defendant has purposefully bred disdain for our judicial institutions and the rule of law, and he’s done this to serve his own ends, and to encourage others to reject the jury verdict that he finds so distasteful.
Joshua Steinglass, Prosecutor
Trump sentenced in felony “hush money” case, released with no restrictions (CBS News)
In a historic decision, a divided Supreme Court on Monday [1 July 2024] ruled that former presidents can never be prosecuted for actions relating to the core powers of their office, and that there is at least a presumption that they have immunity for their official acts more broadly.
Amy Howe
Justices rule Trump has some immunity from prosecution (SCOTUSblog)
Scott Boehmer 