Targeting Trump

A conservative pundit on a “news” channel said that it is dangerous when prosecutors target individuals, and New York prosecutors had campaigned on the promise to “get” Donald Trump. He had a point.

Criminal investigations and prosecutions can be broken down into two broad categories. In the first, a crime is committed, and miscreants are sought. If purported criminals are caught, they are prosecuted. This is the pattern followed in the overwhelming number of prosecutions in this country. A convenience store is robbed; a person is murdered; or an illegal drug is sold, and an arrest and prosecution follow.

In other prosecutions, authorities determine that a person is “bad.” They investigate to find a crime that he has committed and prosecute him for that. A crime is not targeted; a person is. This happened to Al Capone a century ago. Prosecutors knew that Capone was a bootlegger who used unprecedented violence to protect and extend his operations. However, apparently because witnesses could not be found to testify to these activities, he was not prosecuted for those crimes. Instead, prosecutors convinced a jury that Capone lived well beyond the means possible on the income he reported on his tax form. Therefore, he must not be paying all the tax he owed. Thus, Capone went to prison for income tax evasion.

Similarly, there is now the recent complaint that Trump had been targeted. When it comes to New York State, that might be true. New York prosecutors, who are elected, seemed to make campaign pledges to get Trump. The commentator, however, said that such targeting is dangerous. Is it? The action by the New York Attorney General (this was a civil, not a criminal action but the same targeting issues apply) revealed that Trump and his organization monkeyed the books over many years’ time to benefit Trump. In other words, Trump, in fact, did what the Attorney General claimed. He was not manipulated into the equivalent of a false conviction.

In New York City, the Manhattan District Attorney has brought a criminal case against Trump. We don’t know what the result of this case will be, but if Trump is convicted, it will have been proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he did the illegal deeds (in this case, a form of money-laundering). He will not have been railroaded into a conviction for a crime he did not commit. How, then, can the commentator claim that targeting an individual is dangerous?

A certain kind of moralist may simply say, “If he did the deed, punish indeed . . . let him bleed.” But let’s combine some theology with the law. If you are of the Original Sin disposition, we all do things that are wrong. And even if you don’t buy into Genesis, you might know that we have many, many laws on the books with blurry boundaries. (Almost) all of us have committed illegal acts, but stealing a pencil from work, overstating a charitable deduction, or slapping an acquaintance is almost never prosecuted. Our justice system could not handle every violation of the law. However, if the authorities want to “get” someone, and they have enough resources to investigate that person thoroughly, they will almost always be able to bring some sort of criminal or civil prosecution. And, yes, that is a scary power.

So, I have sympathy for the conservative’s concern that Trump has been targeted in New York, but I do not know all that went into the decisions to bring the New York litigations. On the other hand, the Georgia, January 6, and classified documents prosecutions are not the targeted kind. Deeds were done and investigations leading to prosecutions followed. The conservative commentator did not make that distinction but should have.