A nation of men, not laws: Trump coup cases dropped by Justice Department

On Monday, felony grand jury charges filed against President-elect Donald Trump for his role in the failed coup on January 6, 2021, were dismissed by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan at the request of Special Counsel Jack Smith. This was followed on Tuesday by a federal appeals court rejecting a lawsuit against Trump over his hiding of secret documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.

Special counsel Jack Smith speaks about an indictment against former President Donald Trump at the Justice Department office in Washington on Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

In addition to these cases, Trump’s sentencing in the “hush money” case in New York and Trump’s criminal trial in Georgia related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election in that state have also been postponed indefinitely. On November 18, the Georgia Court of Appeals announced it was canceling arguments set for December 5 regarding Trump’s efforts to remove Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from the case. Neither Willis nor the Court made an official statement regarding the cancellation.

In short, Trump faces zero repercussions or prison time for any crime for which he is convicted or indicted.

In his filing calling for the charges against Trump to be dismissed, Smith noted Trump’s re-election and wrote that since 1973, “… the Department of Justice’s position is that the United States Constitution does not prohibit the federal indictment of a person followed by criminal prosecution.” that it prohibits prosecution. sitting President.” But while this may be the Justice Department’s “position,” there is actually no law or constitutional provision preventing it from pursuing the case.

Smith wrote that he “consulted with the Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC)” to see if they “changed their position.” This attempt to provide legal cover for a despicable capitulation ignores the nature of the charges against Trump, the first president in US history to stage a coup to overturn a national election and seize power as president-dictator.

Violent rioters loyal to President Donald Trump attempt to breach the police barrier at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 in Washington. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

“After careful consideration, the Department determined that the OLC’s prior views regarding the Constitution’s prohibition on federal indictment and prosecution of a sitting president apply to this situation and, as a result, this prosecution should be dismissed before the defendant enters office,” Smith wrote. In other words, top Biden administration lawyers, likely including Attorney General Merrick Garland, told Smith not to prosecute Trump.

This dovetails with Attorney General Garland’s duplicitous approach to holding Trump accountable. Garland did not appoint Smith as a special counsel to investigate Trump for his efforts to overturn the election until November 2022, nearly two years after the attack and well after hundreds of low-level fascist foot soldiers were indicted and convicted for their crimes.

Smith added that although the ban was “categorical”, it “does not affect the gravity of the offenses sought, the strength of the Government’s evidence or the merits of the investigation, which the Government fully stands behind.” Smith concluded his case by asking for the charges to be dismissed “without prejudice,” and Judge Chutkan agreed.

“Without prejudice” means that the trial could theoretically be revived after Trump leaves office (assuming he leaves office); However, some of the charges will have exceeded the statute of limitations. More importantly, the glacial speed with which the courts and the Department of Justice moved against Trump in the wake of the attempted coup proves the indifference of the American ruling class to the defense of the people’s democratic rights.

It is entirely the responsibility of President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party to ensure that Trump is free to return to the White House four years after the Capitol attack. The Democrats’ number one priority before, during and after the attack was not to expose and hold accountable Trump and his fascist collaborators within the Republican Party, the US Supreme Court and the military-intelligence-police. It is nothing more than creating a “national unity” behind the global war agenda that started with the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

The move to dismiss the charges came after Trump and Biden held a two-hour meeting at the White House earlier this month. At that meeting, Biden discussed with Trump the outgoing administration’s plans to intensify the war against Russia, including allowing Ukraine to fire U.S. long-range ATACMS missiles deep into Russian territory; Trump also publicly approved this. He praised Biden emerging from the meeting and acknowledged there would be a “smooth transition.”

An Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missile is fired Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2022, during a joint military exercise between the United States and South Korea at an undisclosed location in South Korea. (AP Photo)

War is the main priority of the Democratic Party. Protecting the public from the threat of fascism, which disappeared from his vocabulary after Trump’s election, is not his concern.

This is why Biden and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for a “strong Republican Party” after the coup attempt, even though the majority of the party supported Trump’s dictatorship plan.

After the failed coup, Democrats did their best to cover up the widespread support that Trump’s plan had and maintains to this day among the pillars of the capitalist state. To that end, Democrats appointed the mock House Select Committee on January 6, chaired by Republican Liz Cheney; This committee refused to investigate and expose Trump’s allies in the Pentagon who deliberately delayed sending troops to the besieged Capitol and the United States. Supreme Court, including Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

The dismissal of charges against Trump for numerous crimes refutes Trump’s claim that the United States, where he is above the law, is “a country of laws, not of men.” In fact, Smith’s impeachment request was a precursor to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last July. Trump v. United States, which as World Socialist Website It positions “the President above the law,” he wrote at the time, effectively “turning the ‘Commander in Chief’ into a dictator who can commit crimes with impunity.”

The court’s decision, handed down by a far-right majority that included three justices handpicked by Trump, held that Trump was “immune” from prosecution for any “official acts” he took as president. Dissenting Justice Sonia Sotomayor observed that the court had effectively created a “law-free zone around the President.”

“The President will no longer be subject to criminal prosecution when he exercises his official powers in any way, according to the majority’s reasoning. The Navy’s Seal Team 6 is ordered to assassinate a political rival? Immunity. Is he staging a military coup to keep power? Immunity. Is he taking bribes in exchange for amnesty? Immunity. Immunity, immunity, immunity,” Sotomayor wrote.

The Supreme Court decision in July was not an aberration like the January 6 coup. Rather, it was a new chapter in the ongoing and protracted collapse of democratic forms of government at the heart of world imperialism.

That process, analyzed by WSWS for decades, includes the 2000 stolen election for George W. Bush, when the Supreme Court halted vote counting in Florida in a 5-4 decision. at that time World Socialist Website The Editorial Board observed:

The crisis in the 2000 elections reflects that social contradictions have reached a point so intense that they can no longer be judged within the existing political and constitutional framework.

Chief among these is the massive growth of social inequality, reaching levels not seen in the United States since the 1920s. The division of America between the incredibly wealthy upper crust and the vast majority of the population is ultimately incompatible with democratic forms of government.

Inequality in the United States has intensified further, and with it the attacks on the democratic and social rights of the working class. Accordingly, as of 2022 Congressional Budget OfficeIn the United States, the top 10 percent controlled 60 percent of all wealth; this rate was 56 percent in 1989. Over the same period, the share of wealth controlled by the bottom 50 percent of the population remained flat, according to the CBO. 6 percent.

As the WSWS wrote after Trump’s election victory earlier this month, the election of a fascist marks “a violent reorganization of the American political superstructure to correspond to the actual social relations that exist in the United States.”

Democrats will not resist this realignment, they will seek compromise with Trump in the service of genocide and imperialist war. The struggle to defend democratic rights requires a break with Trump’s supporters in both parties and the independent mobilization of the working class against the capitalist system that is the source of war, fascism and inequality.

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