‘Democracy Is Very Much Now in the Hands of a Series of Courts’
An indicted criminal could well become a major nominee for president
The release, this week, of Donald Trump's mugshot after he was booked into jail in Fulton County Ga, has put something of an exclamation point on the very real possibility that a year from now, one of the nation's major political parties will be running a four-time indicted criminal for president of the United States.
The former president — who is also the distant frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — turned himself into authorities in Fulton County Thursday evening on multiple counts related to trying to overturn the state's result in the 2020 presidential election.
For Trump, his surrender in Georgia was his fourth such arrest this year on a raft of criminal charges in state and federal courts. But it was the first to yield a mugshot.
It's an image which has gone viral, but one which Trump has embraced — and even begun using as a mechanism for fundraising.
He and his team have turned the iconic image into shirts, mugs, and car decals.
“We have been an outlier because Donald Trump instigated a violent coup attempt over two years ago, and until now, has paid very little price. There’s an enormous consequence to this,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a well-known American historian and cultural critic. “He’s been able to hold on to his personality cult, he’s been able to continue to get, you know, money from his supporters. And it sends a message to our allies that we haven’t been serious about holding him to account.
“So this mugshot is telling not only the American people but our allies that we do consider everyone equal in the law,” she added.
Even President Biden commented on the mugshot after he was asked about it, by a reporter.
“I did see it on television,” Biden said, and when asked what he thought of it, the president added, “Handsome guy. Wonderful guy.”
Although Trump, in all, faces nearly 100 charges, none of them are deterring his run for a return to the White House.
“I’m not happy, right, because as far as I’m concerned, all of these court cases, all of these indictments don’t mean anything if he’s still able to run for president next year,” said author and political commentator Jason Johnson. “Unless he is found disqualified from running for president, he is still a danger to our democracy. So if this is a step in the direction of preventing him from running again or forcing him to step down, then it’s great.”
American democracy is now in the hands of the US court system, according to Howard Dean, former chairman of the Democratic Party and himself a one-time presidential aspirant.
“Well, we’re just at the beginning of this. As one of the lawyers that were on when you previously said. And I do think that democracy is very much now in the hands of a series of courts, some of whom have been corrupted by the Federalist Society selection process. So we’re still in hot water,” he said. “What we need is Joe Biden to get re-elected and stop this pretty much sleazy mess that the Republican Party has become.
“So we have a very, very long way to go, and I think all these indictments and the trials are only part of it. It’s all going to come down to November of 2024,” Dean added.
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