Trump prosecution unprecedented — but only in America

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Opinion

Donald Trump has pleaded not guilty in a Manhattan courtroom to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records arising from a hush-money payment to a porn actor during his 2016 campaign, making him the first former president in US history to face criminal prosecution.

While it is unprecedented in America, prosecuting former leaders is common elsewhere — sometimes strengthening democracy and institutions by showing no one is above the law — and former president Richard Nixon only escaped prosecution after the Watergate scandal thanks to a pardon, to spare him the indignity of a trial.

Trump doesn’t do indignity: his imminent arrest has been a rallying cry for more donations to his third presidential campaign. In a bitterly divided America, Trump’s supporters share his outrage and everyone is glued to the latest spectacle.

After many years of investigations into his personal, business and political dealings, the arraignment to hear criminal charges against him was a first for Trump.

A payment of $US130,000 to Stormy Daniels by his lawyer, which Trump reimbursed as routine legal expenses, might have broken campaign-finance rules . . . however, it had already been scrutinised by federal prosecuters, campaign-finance regulators and one past district attorney for Manhatten, all of whom declined to press charges.

A new DA seems to have decided the case is stronger than they did. However, linking a state accounting rule with the federal campaign-finance rule to prosecute Trump in Manhatten is untested, and a judge might decide it is unwarranted.

Even some political opponents who cheered when Trump was twice impeached by the House of Representatives are concerned that this case has proceeded ahead of three more substantial investigations in Washington and Atlanta.

A special counsel investigating Trump’s stolen-election claims prior to the January 6 attack on the Capitol has subpoenaed former vice president Mike Pence to testify before a grand jury. Last month a federal judge ruled one of Trump’s lawyers had to testify before another grand jury over his mishandling of classified documents after leaving the White House. And a third grand jury in Georgia is examining Trump’s demand that state officials “find 11,780 votes” to overturn a narrow election loss in the state.

While Trump’s candidacy might be boosted now by a backlash, it is hard to see all these cases making him more electable if he does win the Republican nomination again.