“If you come at the king, you best not miss.”
I thought this was a line coined by either Shakespeare or The Nature Boy Rick Flair. But it turns out, it’s from the former HBO series “The Wire”. It’s roots, however, are from Machiavelli, who wrote in 1505 “Never do an enemy a small injury. The injury that is to be done to a man ought to be such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.”
That was my thought as news broke last night of an FBI raid on former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate Mar-A-Lago. “Unprecedented!!” bellowed the talking heads on the news channels. “Never before has the home of a former president been raided by federal agents!!” Many predicted indictments, convictions, and prison sentences in the near future. It wasn’t a matter of “if” charges are going to be filed, it was just a matter of “when” charges are going to be filed. And that will assuredly be followed by a slam dunk presentation of evidence and an easy “guilty” verdict from the jury.
But the Department of Justice started down a very dangerous path yesterday. The assumed subject of this investigation retains a great deal of power–and still represents a major threat to democracy. And failure to achieve anything but a clear conviction and his removal from any and all political influence could do irreparable harm to the nation.
Unlike other high-profile targets of federal prosecution, the former president has already sown seeds of distrust in the justice system among his followers. He has portrayed himself as a victim of a far-left wing, “deep state” conspiracy that is itself “undermining democracy” by denying him the power that he seeks. And millions of Americans have bought into that. Some of them have already sought to do his bidding by storming the Capitol building on January 6th of 2021 to prevent the certification of his legitimate loss. What is to stop them from disrupting any legal proceedings that may be in the offing?
Failure to charge and convict after yesterday will only bolster the Trump claim that every level of federal and state government is against him. And will only fuel greater outrage among his acolytes. What’s more, beating the system again will give him an even greater aura of invincibility. He would gladly wear “survived two impeachments and federal charges” as a badge of honor, and not the scarlet letters that anyone else would consider them.
As we have seen multiple times in our past, trials–even with an overwhelming preponderance of evidence pointing toward a defendant’s guilt–don’t always result in that verdict. All it will take is one juror–who kept their red MAGA hat in the closet instead of wearing it to the courthouse each day–to stand by a firmly-held belief that Trump is being framed for every bad thing he has been accused of, and you are looking at a mistrial. Or prosecutors bungle the case and leave enough doubt in all of the jurors minds to vote for acquittal. In that case, the Trump 2024 Revenge of the Sith Campaign gains an incredible amount of momentum–and that which so many sought to prevent becomes almost inevitable.
Perhaps we should take some optimism from the fact that this case appears to be based solely on the removal of classified documents from the White House in violation of federal law. If agents found said documents at Mar-a-Lago, that at least provides a strong base to work from. You may recall that it was tax evasion that finally put Al Capone behind bars for the last of his years–not murder, extortion, racketeering, conspiracy, or smuggling. The Feds went with the one charge they knew they could prove, instead of trying to make weak connections to other criminal activity and hoping a jury would go along with that. A trial on treason, extortion, misuse of campaign funds, and inciting an insurrection against Trump would probably be too complex to win.
But back to Machiavelli and Omar from “The Wire”–the “king” may look like a fat and easy target now, but if the DOJ misses here, the revenge will be swift and brutal.
