Lock Him Up

For many years, but especially the past three, conservatives have warned of the dangers of a criminal justice system that is overly reluctant to put and keep dangerous people in prison. The law is the law. Violations of it should be prosecuted. We are, and must remain, the land of equal justice, not social justice dictated by the ideological fixations of angry Americans.

These same conservatives should try being consistent when it comes to the federal indictment of Donald Trump.

It is stunning to read the grand jury’s 37-count indictment, with its depictions of a former president treating the law with the contemptuous disdain of a mafia don — but with none of a don’s concern for covering his tracks. It is even more stunning to hear what some of those in the legal community who have been defenders of Trump have to say about it.

Alan Dershowitz: “It is the kind of evidence every defense lawyer dreads and every prosecutor dreams about,” the retired Harvard law professor wrote of Trump’s recorded admission of unlawfully possessing highly classified documents.

Jonathan Turley: “Some of the evidence is coming from his former counsel, and these are very damaging statements made against him,” the Fox News legal analyst said, referring to notes made by one of Trump’s lawyers, in which the former president plots to obstruct a government subpoena. “All the government has to do is stick the landing on one count, and he could have a terminal sentence.”

Bill Barr: “It’s a very detailed indictment, and it’s very, very damning,” Trump’s former attorney general told “Fox News Sunday.” As for the suggestion that Trump is the victim of a witch hunt, Barr noted that the Justice Department had “acted in a very patient way” in trying to obtain documents from Trump, only to be met with “very egregious obstruction.”

Barr added that the way in which Trump held on to and possibly shared vital national secrets — including, reportedly, the Pentagon’s planning documents for an attack on Iran — was done in a way that “anyone who really cares about national security, your stomach would churn at.”

Read the rest here.