It’s time to re-learn the hard lesson that criminal investigations of political figures do not always mean that an indictment is imminent.
Credit Ankush Khardori at New York magazine for noticing that articles suggesting “the walls are closing in on Donald Trump” don’t seem quite so convincing anymore, and recognizing that for the past five years or so, “often, pundits offered analysis that distorted the public’s sense of how the criminal-justice system really works and flattered the audience’s prejudices by suggesting that serious legal consequences for Trump might be just around the corner.”
The root of the problem is that there is a near-insatiable demand for news or commentary that promises or suggests, “that political figure you hate is about to be indicted on serious crimes!” And there is no shortage of figures in the political-journalism world who are eager to attract a larger audience by telling people what they want to hear.
If you’ve been around politics long enough, you may remember “Fitzmas,” and Jason Leopold writing that Karl Rove had been indicted and informed he had 24 hours to get his affairs in order, or an investigation of Michael Steele that never amounted to anything, or another investigation of Christine O’Donnell that never resulted in any charges. More recently, you probably recall late-night television comedians performing sketches about how Robert Mueller and the FBI were going to drag Donald Trump out of the Oval Office in handcuffs.
It’s not just a phenomenon about Republican officials. FBI director James Comey famously chose to not pursue charges against Hillary Clinton, and there’s been no word of any developments in that FBI and IRS investigation into Hunter Biden and his business partners. We’re still waiting for special counsel John Durham to finish an investigation that began in May 2019.
The news world is full of stories about criminal investigations of political figures being launched, or rumored, or continuing. Until there’s an actual indictment, you probably shouldn’t expect a dramatic turn that will end a political career. And because political figures interact with a heck of a lot of people, indictments and even convictions of a politician’s associates or donors are not particularly surprising. If you interact with a lot of wealthy people who want to influence government policy, you’re probably more likely to encounter someone involved in white-collar crime. Every once in a while, the conviction of a politician’s associate leads to the indictment of a more prominent figure, but the hype-to-results ratio in the national discussion is out of control.
At the risk of stepping into Andy McCarthy’s territory, prosecutors are wary about filing charges if they’re not certain they can win a conviction, not certain that conviction will be held up on appeal, and not certain that the accused cannot successfully paint the prosecution as a political vendetta. And every now and then, a prosecutor really will be blinded by a political vendetta — and their cases tend to blow up in their faces.