Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg has effectively pulled the plug on a state criminal prosecution of Donald Trump and/or his family over the Trump Organization’s business and taxes. While Bragg has not formally shut the door, and Trump’s legal woes are far from over, it seems that New York will get no closer than the small-beer indictment of former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg over the tax reporting of perks.
Whatever you think of Trump as a political figure, that is a good thing. Political opponents bringing criminal charges against a former president is a dramatic step that has never before been taken in the United States. It would be entirely appropriate to charge Trump or another former president over a clear, obvious violation of a regularly enforced criminal law — if, for example, Trump actually shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue. But pushing the envelope to indict a former president under a creative expansion of the law, upon tenuous evidence, in ways not customarily done to ordinary citizens, would be a disaster for the rule of law.
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