the indictment

acting on our behalf

It is a tragic day for our country for so many reasons. I try, even if I fail at times, to avoid if at all possible discussing Donald Trump’s behaviour directly because I want to cultivate measured, civilised public policy discussion about Actions Creating Consequences; the former president, his supporters, and his opponents too often elicit anything but a measured, civilised public policy environment. As my respected friend, Joseph Collins, notes in Joseph’s Newsletter Strategic Affairs no. 22 today, ‘it is sad because the representatives of the people have announced, for the first time in our nation’s history, the federal indictment of an ex-President for violations of the law, some of which Mr. Trump has claimed are his prerogative as a former president’.

I find also solemn, both for the tragedy of our politics further fracturing into hostility towards and humiliation of our institutions. Occupants of the Presidency are not perfect any more than any of us; part of the genius of the American system is electing men from log cabins along the Ohio River, or wealthy aristocrats from different branches of a single New York Dutch family, a peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia, or a real estate-turned-television personality from New York (hopefully we soon will in future add women to this list) to office with all the flaws and strengths they bring. But, institutions must endure for this nation to survive. The institutions must endure as people fade away.

The indictment resulted from a case presented to a southern Florida Grand Jury of former President Trump’s peers. Former President Trump is presumed innocent until proven guilty. He will have the opportunity to present a defense, following the Special Prosecutor’s presentation of a case which rests on 38 counts in an indictment unsealed this afternoon. Thirty-one of the counts rest on willful retention of national defense information alone.

This indicted leading presidential candidate in the United States apparently will continue his campaign unimpeded by this indictment which he is, of course, free to do. Across the Atlantic, just this afternoon former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, resigned his seat in Parliament following the notification of an investigation of one of many controversies during his PMship. Johnson, like former president Trump, dragged his public through flamboyant, chaotic experiences during the past decade.

The difference between the United States and British politics today is that the British Conservative Party abandoned Johnson while Republican politicians in the United States generally refuse to allow that Trump could have acted illegally. Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson and Senator Mitt Romney, the only Republican Senator with the guts to vote to impeach him in two opportunities, are notable voices in the wilderness who condemn the former President.

I suspect few Trump voters turned on the president today; the real question is whether they will seriously evaluate the government’s case when presented in court, much less stop supporting him for the highest office in the land. Similarly, few opponents seem to recall that Trump has the right to a trial before his peers. We are so unwilling to allow the legal process to wend its way, tending instead to introduce politics as the basis to everything we are hearing and reading.

In closing this afternoon rather than droning on, I rue that our nation must face a painful period as this process procedures. I only pray everyone in this entire process and on the sidelines approaches this in a measured, non-violent manner. No one is above the law. We have procedures and processes which, like science, are traceable and open in our accountable system. Additionally, no officer of the court or government employee operating on behalf of the citizens of this country should fear for her or his life for doing the job for us. This is all for the 340,000,000 or so of us who are citizens. FIN