The Trump verdict

A New York jury has convicted Donald Trump of 34 felony counts related to some hush money he paid some news outlets, with the goal of influencing the 2016 presidential election. Or that's the story I took from my brief perusal of some Washington Post articles and from Ken White and Josh Barro's Serious Trouble podcast.

At any rate, I'm happy to see Mr. Trump convicted of a crime. I hope, but am not very optimistic, that it will move the needle enough to ensure he won't win reelection.

However, my gladness at Mr. Trump's conviction is tempered by the fact that I simply assumed he was guilty. Since his election, many, many others in my circle of friends and acquaintances have been explaining how Mr. Trump deserves to go to jail and how they'll relish his imprisonment when it arrives. 

My acquaintances have been calling for Mr. Trump's imprisonment long before they could cite any criminal act he had allegedly done. They knew they didn't like him. The believed (as I did and do) that he was a horrible person and a dangerous president, but they didn't know of an actual crime. They made up their mind that he must be guilty of something. Or if not, he's an enemy and must be imprisoned.

Maybe not all of my acquaintances. Maybe some of them relied on actual facts. Maybe they used their deep, deep knowledge of criminal law, their years and years of legal training, and their insider familiarity with Mr. Trump's actions to arrive at the conclusions they did. But it's just quite possible that some of them didn't have that knowledge or training or insider familiarity. Maybe, just maybe, some of them were as ignorant as I was and am.

While I don't think I went as far as hoping he'd be criminally prosecuted (my memory may be faulty), I wanted him impeached from the start. Wanting impeachment isn't the same thing as wanting criminal prosecution. It's a political statement. It's like trying to remove a president for firing a cabinet member, or for undermining our justice system by lying under oath to a grand jury. But my reasoning was similar to my acquaintances'. Of course, later on, it was clear (to me) that he did things to qualify for impeachment and maybe criminal prosecution. But I started wanting impeachment long before it was clear to me he had committed any "high crime or misdemeanor." 

The truth is, the main reason I wanted Mr. Trump to be found guilty because I don't want him to be president again, and I hope a guilty verdict will prevent his winning. I suppose I have other reasons, too. And maybe one of them is the sincere desire to see justice done, even though I'm not always sure I truly, deep down want justice and even though I suspect many (maybe most) others deep down share my inclination. What they want (and probably what I want) is revenge more than justice.

(An aside: I'm also uneasy about the crime he is convicted of, assuming I understand it correctly. I'm not sure why it's a crime, and I'm not sure it should be a crime. But many of my acquaintances have known all along that he's guilty. So they must be right.)

I'm sure Mr. Trump will rely on that desire for revenge and for preventing his presidency. He will claim he's not really guilty, but merely a victim of malicious prosecution. I believe that claim is probably false, notwithstanding my (layperson's) concern about the law he was convicted of violating. But even so, Mr. Trump will have a point when he states, as he inevitably will if he hasn't already, that people have been after him from the get go.