With the 2024 election now just ten months away, and with Aaron Burr not here to object, I’m going out on a limb to say the election-interference prosecution of Donald Trump, the former president and likely Republican presidential nominee, by the Justice Department of Joe Biden, the incumbent president and Trump’s likely Democratic opponent, is the most politically charged in American history. In that criminal case, both Trump and Biden Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith are being driven by the 2024 election calendar. That is scandalous for one of them.
Prosecutors are never supposed to take politics into account. As the Washington Examiner’s Byron York points out, there are explicit Justice Department guidelines that forbid Smith from trying to influence an election — though, if the mainstream press yawns and the presiding judge fails to ream him out, there is not much that can be done. By contrast, the accused, who is not a voluntary participant and is presumed innocent, has every right to spotlight the prosecution’s partisanship and, in this case, to prioritize his political interests over his legal interests. (Whether doing so is wise is a different question.)
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