Trump's Indictment Presents Republicans With a Choice

With Donald Trump's criminal indictment, so far many - perhaps most - Republicans ever fearful of the GOP's hideous MAGA base are already rallying to Trump's defense and furthering Trump's lie that he is being persecuted.   Meanwhile, they don't even know the specific charges - so reports say 30 some counts - or their merits.   Among those astonishingly is Mike Pence, the man Trump's January 6, 2021, mob wanted to hang, proving yet again that Pence has no honor or basic decency.  No amount of self-prostitution is too much for the vast majority of Republican office holders.  As a piece at The Atlantic by a former Republican lays out, the choice before Republicans is actually very simple: (i) Crime and violence and Trump, or (ii) the rule of law and the U. S. Constitution.   There really is no middle ground.  Here are excerpts: 

The first Catholic. The first African American. Someday, maybe soon, the first woman. The history of the presidency is a history of firsts. Now there is one more: the first former president to be indicted.  It’s a solemn and sad moment. It’s also a fiercely just moment.

Remember that although Donald Trump’s indictment in New York has been confirmed by one of his attorneys, we do not yet know, as of the evening of Thursday, March 30, what he has been indicted for. When Trump himself circulated the first rumors of his pending indictment, many reacted with rapid comments on the inadvisability of indicting a former president for offenses arising from a sexual affair, a reservation I share. But it’s also possible that this reported indictment arises from the Trump Organization’s decades-long practices of criminal tax fraud.

In 2018, The New York Times reported that the Trump family had allegedly evaded hundreds of millions of dollars in estate taxes through complex schemes of false invoicing. In 2022, a New York State court convicted the Trump Organization of evading income taxes through false invoicing. When it came time to pay off women who claimed to have had sexual connections with Trump, he allegedly reverted to long-standing practice.

The case against Trump might not be a sex-payoff case, or even a campaign-finance case. It could fundamentally be a tax-fraud case, the latest installment of a multigenerational criminal practice that has cheated the people of the United States and New York of huge amounts of money.

More indictments by more states in more cases may be filed soon. Donald Trump is not an occasional lawbreaker. He incited the mob that ended the American tradition of the peaceful transfer of power—and that inflicted unnecessary injury and avoidable death both upon law-enforcement officers and Trump’s own deceived supporters. He tried to intimidate state-level election officials to manipulate vote totals to fraudulently preserve his hold on office. The jeopardy will only accumulate.

Atop all the other questions on the ballot in that election, therefore, will be this: Crime and violence and Trump, or law and the Constitution—where do you stand?

Good God, where does his Republican Party and mine now stand? The wrong is overwhelming and the shame is crushing—but the only decent choice for the honest and patriotic American is now starker, purer, and more certain than ever.