For The Washington Post

ONE TIME USE ILLUSTRATION FOR OP-KAGAN ON THE TRUMP DICTATORSHIP

Music-Drake Kendrick Lamar

The Washington Post

op-allen-democracypromo

(iStock)

stock

Patient lying inside a medical scanner in hospital

(Michelle Kondrich/The Washington Post)

WAUKESHA, WI - MAY 1st: Former president Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally on Wednesday May 1st, 2024.  (Photo by Sara Stathas for the Washington Post)

RUSSIA-US-DIPLOMACY-BASKET-COURT

Contributor

FILE PHOTO: Protests continue on Columbia University campus in support of Palestinians

Supreme Court of the United States

Photographer

**ONE TIME USE ONLY FOR OP-LAMOTT

Election 2024 Trump

promo handout

Promo image for edit-solar-storm-0424.

Election 2024 Pennsylvania

other

Hundreds gather for the Lost Voices of Fentanyl Rally in Washington, D.C.

staff

Wolfeboro Independence Day Parade with Special Guest Gov. Ron DeSantis

Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Miss Manners: Co-worker lies to avoid doing her job

Ask Amy: I’m scared of my adult stepson who keeps losing his temper

Carolyn Hax: Fiancé plans to have a baby with someone else

Best Places to Work in the Federal Government 2023

The 26 best new restaurants in the D.C. area

How America tried and failed to stay White

 Key Senate matchups set for November in Maryland, West Virginia

Biden and Trump agree to CNN debate in June, ABC faceoff in September

The incomprehensible, unattainable scale of Trump’s deportation plan

The Post’s choices in Northern Virginia’s U.S. House primaries

States see legalized sports betting as a tax windfall — but at what cost?

Haiti’s plight is a case study in the ‘responsibility to protect’

Putin hails Russia’s ties with China as ‘stabilizing’ force in the world

Who is Robert Fico, the Slovakian prime minister who was shot?

Middle East conflict live updates: U.S.-built pier anchored in Gaza;  ICJ due to hear arguments on Rafah

Puppy abandoned with heart-rending note is adopted, named Minerva

Man, 91, shocks tiny firehouse with $500K gift: ‘Nobody knew how much I’d saved’

Retired cop meets abandoned baby he helped 23 years ago: ‘What are the odds?’

When budget flights actually make good budget sense

Cruise ships to return to Baltimore two months after bridge collapse 

Some cruise prices are about to get a little more clear

Look to the cloud to protect the life documents saved on your computer

Can you spot bad financial advice on TikTok? Take our quiz.

5 myths about Social Security as the program faces a funding crisis

Netflix will air NFL’s Christmas games, a major step for streaming service

Sam Feist, longtime CNN executive, will become CEO of C-SPAN

Michael Cohen testimony ties Donald Trump to hush money payment

Cruise settles with person dragged under one of its robotaxis

Senators studied AI for a year. Critics call the result ‘pathetic.’

Commanders will start a new era with a palatable 2024 schedule

The new dining reality: Smaller groups and shorter weeks

Trump trial live updates: Michael Cohen testifies about lies during cross-examination in hush money case

Jabin Botsford

Dennis Aftergut, a former federal prosecutor, is of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy.

Donald Trump’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/03/30/trump-ny-indictment/" target="_blank">indictment</a> in New York on Thursday is a somber watershed in U.S. history. Not only has no former president ever been charged with a crime before, but we are also witnessing the long-overdue reinforcement of a foundational principle of our republic: No one, however powerful, is above the law.

The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/30/trump-indictment-new-york/" target=_blank>decision</a> by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to indict the former president also illustrates the beauty of the federalism underlying our republic’s design. It is, Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote, an elegant feature of our federal system that “a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory.”

In this case, it is New York serving as the proving ground to establish the accountability of a man who succeeded in becoming president, in considerable measure, by covering up his past. Some understandably worry that his later attempts to overturn the Constitution were far worthier subjects for indictment. While we wait to see whether charges will be filed on those counts, we should keep in mind that, but for Trump’s alleged misconduct just before the 2016 election, the attempted coup of late 2020 and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2021/jan-6-insurrection-capitol/" target=_blank>Jan. 6, 2021</a>, might never have occurred.

Moreover,  a prosecutor pursues crimes as he finds them. The precise charges are not yet known, but the case has focused on Trump’s alleged $130,000 payoff to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet on the eve of the 2016 election — so symbolic of his brand: utter defiance of morality and law in pursuit of power and wealth. If those allegations indeed are the basis of Bragg’s charges, and are proved true, the larger victim will have been the public, from whom crucial information was hidden. Having gotten himself elected, Trump spent four years in office — and all the time since — swinging a wrecking ball against the edifice of our constitutional republic.

Henry Olsen: It should be outrageous that Trump’s indictment is not a federal case

Protecting the principle that no person is above the law requires constant vigilance, as we have already come perilously close to losing it once. It was damaged nearly 50 years ago, when another modern president committed provable crimes in office.

In 1974, President Richard M. Nixon escaped criminal accountability for his Watergate offenses when his successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned him to “<a href="https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0122/1252066.pdf" target=_blank>shut and seal</a>” the book on what he had called “<a href="https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/speeches/740001.asp" target=_blank>our long national nightmare</a>.” In fact, letting the most notorious political criminal of his day escape justice helped set the stage for the nightmare’s return — with a vengeance. Trump’s misconduct in office exceeded Nixon’s, and he came close to plunging our nation into chaos.

In <a href="https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-1-10#s-lg-box-wrapper-25493273" target=_blank>Federalist No. 1</a>, Alexander Hamilton described the greatest danger to the government that he and his co-founders had designed. The threat came, he wrote, from men who “have begun their careers by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.” No one in 1787 could have foreseen Trump, but history had taught the founders about the type: men of “perverted ambition” who “hope to aggrandize themselves by the confusions of their country.”

Clarity is the antidote to those confusions. It comes when prosecutors enforce legal lines that separate permissible government action from criminal conduct. Law properly applied has always been the most effective instrument of a stable, constitutionally based society.

Editorial Board: The Trump indictment is a poor test case for prosecuting a former president

We have every reason to expect that Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis will follow Bragg’s lead with indictments of Trump for breaking far more significant rules that outlaw attempts to negate the people’s will by overturning an election. Indeed, now that Bragg has indicted Trump for getting himself elected via one alleged fraud at the front end of his 2016 election, it would be poetic justice should Smith and Willis indict him later for conspiring to <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=18+usc+371&oq=18+usc+371&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j0i512l6j69i60.21124j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8" target=_blank>defraud the United States</a> and <a href="https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/2020/title-21/chapter-2/article-15/section-21-2-603/#:~:text=Conspiracy%20to%20Commit%20Election%20Fraud,-Universal%20Citation%3A%20GA&text=A%20person%20commits%20the%20offense,a%20violation%20of%20this%20chapter." target=_blank>Georgia</a>, respectively, via a fake-elector scheme at the back end.

Some call it a political mistake to indict Trump. Criminal trial risks making him a martyr, they say, energizing his base in the middle of his campaign for the 2024 Republican nomination. Politics, however, is not the business of prosecutors. Their sworn duty is to follow the facts and enforce the law in their jurisdiction when they have the evidence to prove that the law has been violated.

Trump is entitled to the presumption of innocence, and the case against him must still be argued before a jury of his fellow citizens. Indictment is just the beginning, but it sets this chapter in the timeless story of the law.

What history will note and long remember are two things that happened on March 30, 2023. First, that our federal republic demonstrated that one state could indeed serve as a laboratory — here, to establish a precedent of accountability for the powerful. And second, that an undaunted local prosecutor from that state planted the flag of justice firmly on the side of the rule of law.

Dennis Aftergut

washpost

Alvin Bragg indicts Trump and restores faith in the rule of law

the-washington-post

Trump Iowa

Editorials

Columns

Guest opinions

Cartoons

Submit a guest opinion

Today's Opinions newsletter

Opinions

iptc-media/crime_law_and_justice/judiciary/court

iptc-media/crime_law_and_justice/judiciary

iptc-media/crime_law_and_justice/crime

iptc-media/society/values/ethics

iptc-media/economy_business_and_finance/economic_sector/financial_and_business_service

iptc-media/crime_law_and_justice/judiciary/prosecution

iptc-media/politics

iptc-media/crime_law_and_justice/judiciary/court/trial_(court)/defendant

iptc-media/crime_law_and_justice/judiciary/court/judge

iptc-media/society/values

iptc-media/economy_business_and_finance

iptc-media/crime_law_and_justice/justice_and_rights

iptc-media/crime_law_and_justice

iptc-media/politics/government

iptc-media/politics/political_process

iptc-media/politics/government/impeachment

iptc-media/crime_law_and_justice/law

iptc-media/society

iptc-media/crime_law_and_justice/judiciary/court/trial_(court)

iptc-media/economy_business_and_finance/economic_sector/financial_and_business_service/legal_service

client-blocklists/Client List: Becton Dickinson KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/CLIENT LIST: Nomura KWs 2021 - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Tito's KW List - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Johnson & Johnson KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/P+ The Offer KW List - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Bed Bath & Beyond KWs - INCLUDE ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: USAA KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: T. Rowe Price KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Google PG KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Discover Card KWs – EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/T. Rowe Price KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Microsoft KWs 2 - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_Automotive Interest 2.5.15_legacyaux_jqs

client-blocklists/HBO KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Ford/Lincoln KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Kyndryl KW List - EXCLUDES ALL

advertising/European Content

client-blocklists/Louis Vuitton KW List - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Navy Federal Credit Union NFCU KWs 2 - EXCLUDES ALL - 12.23.20

client-blocklists/United Airlines KW List - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Diageo - Johnnie Walker KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/ Client List: Mercedes EQS KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/FlexForm KW List - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Boeing KWs 2021 - EXCLUDE ALL 

client-blocklists/Client List: Apple Marcom KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Morgan Stanley KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/Donald Trump

client-blocklists/Client List: Organon KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Verizon KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Facebook KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/CLIENT LIST: GOLDMAN SACHS SEC KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/WaPo: Combined Disaster Keyword List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Hulu KW List - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Mastercard KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Beto for Texas KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/LV Queen 2022 Neg KW List - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: AT&T KWs 2022 - INCLUDES ANY - NEW

client-blocklists/Synchrony Financial KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/WaPo: Natural Disaster Keyword List - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: PMI KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Ukraine-Russia (Apple News) KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Hermes KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: AstraZeneca KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Showtime KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: ExxonMobil KWs - INCLUDES ANY Q4 2022

client-blocklists/Client List: Apple TV+ KW – INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client Neg KW List: Omega KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Ronald McDonald House KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/P+ Halo KW List - EXCLUDES ALL

advertising/World National Local Content

client-blocklists/Safeway KW List Commanders Q4 2022 - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/PMI KWs 2021 - EXCLUDE ALL

client-blocklists/Marcus Goldman Sachs Neg KW List - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_Congressional Elections_legacyaux_r48

client-blocklists/GEICO KWs - INCLUDES ANY_4.26.21

client-blocklists/Client List: Morgan Stanley KWs - INCLUDES ANY Q4 2022

client-blocklists/Client List: Navy Federal Credit Union NFCU KWs Q4 2022 - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Amazon KWs 2022 - EXCLUDE ALL 

client-blocklists/UVA KW List Q4 2022 - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Eli Lily KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_Crime, Law & Justice_legacyaux_xvt

advertising/B2_Crime_legacyaux_0sb

advertising/B2_Culture and Tradition_legacyaux_kfx

client-blocklists/Client List: Citibank KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/SAP KW List - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Citibank KWs 2021 - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Purina KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Client List: Fidelity Investments KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: GM Energy KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/CME KW List 2022 - EXCLUDES ALL 

client-blocklists/Client List: Turbo Tax KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_Government & Policy_legacyaux_mza

client-blocklists/Client List: EY KWs - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/B2_Health and Beauty_legacyaux_3fv

client-blocklists/Bank of America KWs - EXCLUDES ALL

client-blocklists/Chase KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Hermes KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Client List: Hermes (Alexandra) KWs - INCLUDES ANY

client-blocklists/Marriott KW List Q4 2022 - INCLUDES ANY

advertising/Racing and Nascar Enthusiasts

Sign up for the Prompt 2024 newsletter for opinions on the biggest questions in politics

Washington Post Opinions

The Washington Post Opinions section features opinion articles, op-eds, editorials by the Editorial Board, global opinions and letters to the editor on the issues of the day. Offerings include columns by Washington Post opinion writers, political cartoons by editorial cartoonists Ann Telnaes and Michael de Adder and podcasts by Jonathan Capehart.

By indicting Trump, Alvin Bragg restores our faith in the rule of law