You Don’t Have to Love Trump to Fear a Partisan US Justice System
Powerful partisan prosecutors and judges and a careless, vengeful Congress have been perverting the course of US justice for decades.
Her party shouldn’t matter.
Photographer: Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty Images
After a jury in New York found former President Donald Trump guilty of 34 felony counts, his narrow lead in the polls over President Joe Biden hardly budged. That is to say, roughly half the country is unmoved by the new status of its preferred candidate as a convicted felon. Maybe it’s worse than that. Perhaps, as some commentators think, the convictions will add to Trump’s support by affirming his followers’ belief view that the country’s justice system is rigged against him and by converting others to the same opinion.
Despite blanket coverage, one aspect of this unfolding horror has received too little attention. Trump’s infractions together with the questionable judgement of some of his pursuers aren’t the whole story. These developments arise in part from a systemic and distinctively American vulnerability. Long before Trump came along, the US criminal-justice system was a disaster – this very disaster – waiting to happen.