The Trump Indictment: No One Is Above the Law

A longstanding myth enveloping former president Donald Trump is that he routinely eludes law enforcement. While he has spent decades probing the law’s boundaries, enjoying the insulation from legal accountability that wealth provides and shredding civic norms, the reality is that he has rarely faced robust and unforgiving prosecutions — until he entered and departed the White House.

One argument is that law enforcement didn’t come knocking until Trump’s presidential years because he then became a political target. In that scenario, law enforcement and the courts are untrustworthy and partisan actors. Another more accurate and tactile argument is that it took a presidency to reveal how lawless and dangerous Trump is, and that he desperately needed reining in to preserve the Constitution, democracy and essential American institutions.