How the lawfare campaign against Trump backfired

The effort to bankrupt, disgrace and banish Donald J. Trump to a jail cell in Riker’s Island has instead helped pave his road right back to the Oval Office. The unprecedented abuse of the American legal system fueled plenty of cable news coverage, but it also alienated the electorate. As with President Joe Biden’s mental decline, voters trusted their own eyes over the tale being told on their screens and delivered a decisive verdict against an eight-year politically-motivated lawfare campaign — exit polls showed that Trump voters were more likely to say democracy was under threat.

It is worth recapping these efforts in full: Trump had just assumed the presidency in 2017 when former FBI director Robert Mueller and his elite group of DC lawyers began their probe into whether he was a Russian plant. For two years the American public received breathless reporting from the likes of CNN and MSNBC of leaked stories treated as fact. Television analysts and purportedly knowledgeable insiders told us these were real concerns that should keep us up at night. No pushback was countenanced because such an extreme national security threat being run by serious public servants could never be a hoax, right?

Then it all collapsed. Rather than holding anyone accountable, Trump’s opponents moved on to ever more elaborate jurisprudential gymnastics to get their man.

New York amended its laws to allow E. Jean Carroll to sue Trump over thirty-year-old allegations of sexual impropriety with only fragments of supporting evidence. A Democratic-controlled Congress impeached Trump, first for a Ukraine-related infraction that impressed few, a second time for the January 6 riots. Then they produced a year-long, taxpayer-funded television show again revisiting January 6. New York State attorney general Letitia James — who campaigned on finding something to pursue Trump for — brought an unprecedented civil fraud action in a case lacking a fraud victim.

All of that was just the warm-up for the main event. The Justice Department appointed another supposedly elite prosecutor, Jack Smith, to find federal charges to bring against Trump. Joe Biden — ever a profile in courage — used Smith as both a sword and shield. His purportedly serious special counsel title made it sound like his crusade was legitimate; his supposed independence allowed Biden not to have to take ownership of or explain why prosecuting his chief political opponent was legitimate.

Not to be outdone by James or beaten to the punch by Smith, New York City district attorney Alvin Bragg dusted off a six-year-old case regarding porn star Stormy Daniels that even his predecessor had previously discarded. A hostile Manhattan jury and a hyperaggressive trial judge ended up with thirty-four guilty verdicts. The press could not contain its glee; now they could add “convicted felon” to Trump’s list of monikers.

Then came racketeering charges by Fulton County DA Fani Willis, which quickly fell into a tailspin due to her own self-inflicted incompetence. And then Smith brought federal indictments in Florida and Washington, DC. Everybody was getting in on the action.

It was obvious these cases ranged from weak to nonsensical, but supposed legal experts assured Americans they were legitimate. The hypocrisy of charging Trump for classified-document mishandling while Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton received a pass for their own transgressions was obvious, but we were told Trump’s case was different in scale. And somehow Trump’s cases rocketed through the docket just in time for the 2024 election.

Democratic strategists may have seen an opportunity, but voters saw all of these proceedings for what they were: rabid prosecutors making names for themselves; hack TV commentators assuring us these cases were authentic; judges making decisions and allowing convictions full of glaring legal errors that wouldn’t be corrected until after Election Day. Americans did not need to be white-shoe attorneys or legal academics to know that what they were seeing was grossly corrupt.

Trump now has the opportunity to rise above it all and move forward. But should he? After what the man faced, he could rain down the same firestorm on his adversaries that they unleashed on him. Trump could tear up the Robert Hur report and charge Joe Biden with mishandling classified information. He could sic his Justice Department on the Biden family and investigate them into oblivion. He could fire not only Jack Smith but the career attorneys and agents who spent the last three years persecuting him. Which may be why the Department of Justice signaled it was “winding down” the Smith investigations within hours of Trump’s victory.

None of this is likely to happen, just as Trump declined to pursue Hillary Clinton’s classified document misdeeds back in 2017. But make no mistake: despite all the backfires, anti-Trump prosecutors have learned nothing from this sordid history and will doubtless repeat it once back in power. Letitia James has already vowed to continue the fight. Fani Willis was just re-elected and doubtless will keep her case alive.

It will be up to Americans to remember this sordid and grotesque misuse of our legal system and say: never again.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s December 2024 World edition.