{"id":14504,"date":"2023-03-30T19:38:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-31T02:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=14504"},"modified":"2023-03-31T19:51:07","modified_gmt":"2023-04-01T02:51:07","slug":"issue-of-the-week-human-rights-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=14504","title":{"rendered":"Issue of the Week: Human Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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A President Faces Prosecution, and a Democracy Is Tested<\/em>, The New York Times, March 31, 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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For the first time in history, a former president of the United States, the most powerful person on the planet when in office, has been indicted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tomorrow’s front page article in The New York Times follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“A President Faces Prosecution, and a Democracy Is Tested”<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Peter Baker, March 31, 2023<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter Baker has covered the last five presidents. He reported from Washington.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more than two centuries, American presidents were effectively shielded from indictment. But the case against former President Donald J. Trump breaks that taboo and sets a new precedent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u9605\u8bfb\u7b80\u4f53\u4e2d\u6587\u7248<\/a>\u95b1\u8b80\u7e41\u9ad4\u4e2d\u6587\u7248<\/a>Leer en espa\u00f1ol<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Follow our live updates on\u00a0<\/em>Donald Trump\u2019s indictment<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the first time in American history, a former president of the United States has been indicted on criminal charges. It is worth pausing to repeat that: An American president has been indicted for a crime for the first time in history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So many unthinkable firsts have occurred since Donald J. Trump was elected to the White House in 2016, so many inviolable lines have been crossed, so many unimaginable events have shocked the world that it is easy to lose sight of just how astonishing this particular moment really is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For all of the focus on the tawdry details<\/a> of the case or its novel legal theory<\/a> or its political impact<\/a>, the larger story is of a country heading down a road it has never traveled before, one fraught with profound consequences for the health of the world\u2019s oldest democracy. For more than two centuries, presidents have been held on a pedestal, even the ones swathed in scandal, declared immune from prosecution while in office and, effectively, even afterward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No longer. That taboo has been broken. A new precedent has been set. Will it tear the country apart, as some feared about putting a former president on trial after Watergate? Will it be seen by many at home and abroad as victor\u2019s justice akin to developing nations where former leaders are imprisoned by their successors? Or will it become a moment of reckoning, a sign that even someone who was once the most powerful person on the planet is not above the law?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhether the indictment is warranted or not, it crosses a huge line in American politics and American legal history,\u201d said Jack L. Goldsmith, a Harvard Law professor and former top Justice Department official under President George W. Bush.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If that were not enough to shake the timbers of the republic, the first may not be the last. Mr. Trump could face a second indictment in Georgia<\/a> and a third from federal prosecutors and potentially even a fourth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is consternation that the barrier-shattering indictment would involve something as unseemly as paying hush money to cover up a sexual romp. Given that the defendant has been involved in far more earth-shattering events like trying to overturn an election and inspiring an attack on the Capitol to prevent the transfer of power, the allegations by Manhattan prosecutors seem less than epochal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if the issue is accountability, then the case could redraw the lines<\/a> and make it less daunting for prosecutors in Georgia and Washington to follow suit by charging more serious crimes if they have the evidence, since they will not have to bear the burden of justifying action never taken before. Leave it to the only president ever impeached in Congress twice to face so many prosecutions that lawyers need a scorecard just to keep track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the indictment of Mr. Trump takes the country into uncharted waters, the authors of the Constitution might have been surprised only that it took so long. Justice Department policy\u00a0maintains that sitting presidents cannot be indicted<\/a>, but the framers explicitly contemplated the prospect of them being charged after leaving office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A president impeached by the House and convicted and removed from office by the Senate \u201cshall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law,\u201d Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution<\/a> declares.<\/p>\n\n\n\n