No Trump Card

A COURT CASE IN the US right now has the potential to send the world in a tizzy, come judgment day. The case is being argued before a jury, which means a few men and women will decide on something that has ram­ifications for countries and continents and, in their own nation, consequences that might cleave an already divided population even further. They will hold whether former President Donald Trump is guilty or not. The case deals with election campaign fraud based on legal technicalities. That is not as straightforward as murder or conven­tional corruption and falls in a grey zone of public perception. There are three other criminal cases also against him, all similarly to do with politics.

If Trump is held guilty then it could signal chaos. He is the presidential nominee for the Republican Party and at present is leading in most polls, making him the favourite in the race. If he is convicted, he will still contest, probably making him even more popular among his supporters. If he loses, they will blame it on the ‘fake’ cases filed against him. The president of the US is the most powerful man in the world. Who wins decides policies that have ramifications right from the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Israel, to global trade, to how many visas Indians working in IT firms get.

Such a case also brings to the fore the tenuous nature of the idea of justice. The president of the US is im­mune from prosecution for any crime in office. The reason for it is precisely because the stakes are too high to send such an office bearer to jail. That is why democracies are cautious about putting political leaders in jail until the evidence is overwhelming and it is expected that itself will make the pub­lic see reason and not overreact. But when it is more or less certain that the overreaction will happen, what should a country do? Can it let popularity and the potential for disorder trump the idea of justice? It ought to be a straight­forward answer. Justice should be sacrosanct in principle.

Even Trump supporters would agree, except that they would argue that what their leader is facing is not justice at all but a system being manoeuvred to drive him out of the presidential race. They would point to the history of political vendettas.

The pragmatic option would be to wait till the elections are over and if he loses then to proceed with the conviction. If he wins, then they would have to wait four more years until he is out of office but there would be the appearance and the implementation of justice. The timing of the case is just about the worst possible moment and only serves to confirm the conspiracy to his supporters. Normally stable societies are expected to have systems that self-correct to prevent collapses, but this is one of those moments when the ball is rolling inexorably towards something ominous.

Donald TrumpRepublican PartyUS Elections 2024US JudiciaryUS politics