In response to the news that Special Counsel Jack Smith had dropped all charges against Donald Trump over his attempt to overturn the 2020 election and preserve classified information, Dan Goldman, a prosecutor turned New York Democrat and member of the Oversight Committee, complained of the House of Representatives, “a disgrace to justice in this country”.
Related: Prosecutors drop election interference and document cases against Trump
“It shows that Donald Trump is above the law,” Goldman told CNN. “The Supreme Court placed him above the law [by ruling that he had ‘absolute immunity’ for official acts] but now he appears to be escaping full responsibility for crimes indicted by a grand jury.”
Goldman rejected the argument that Trump’s re-election had cleared the American people of all charges.
“I think it was very clear that people voted for Donald Trump because they thought he would improve the lives of the middle class, and perhaps on top of that, that he would secure the border,” Goldman said. “They did not vote for him to dismantle our democracy, to attack the Constitution, to politicize all of our agencies, and certainly not as a referendum on his criminal cases.
“These cases should have been fought in court… and Donald Trump should not have run out the clock.”
Elsewhere, Aquilino Gonell, a former Capitol Police sergeant who memorably testified about his experiences and injuries on January 6, 2021, when Trump sent a mob to attack Congress, complained of a simple “miscarriage of justice.”
“‘No one is above the law’ is a great slogan,” added Gonell, who suffered injuries to his hands, shoulder, calves and feet, as well as psychological trauma, during the attack on the Capitol.
For many Americans, however, “no one is above the law” no longer seemed like a legal reality on Monday. Three weeks after Trump defeated Kamala Harris, Smith dropped 44 charges against him: four for subverting the election and 40 for keeping classified data.
Smith said he was following Justice Department policy, which says a sitting president cannot be indicted. He also said he acted “without prejudice,” meaning the cases could be refiled after Trump left power.
That echoed the situation in New York, where sentencing on Trump’s 34 felony convictions related to hush money payments to a porn star has been postponed. Eight more charges of election subversion are pending in Georgia.
Nevertheless, there was an atmosphere of despondency among Trump’s opponents. Writer Tom Nichols, a conservative Trump critic, summed it up: “Mission accomplished. He ran ahead [president] to stay out of jail, and here we are.
Steven Cheung, Trump’s spokesman, celebrated “a major victory for the rule of law” and added: “The American people and President Trump want an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and we look forward to uniting our country .”
Democrats, however, expect Trump to be seeking revenge, not unity — and immediate comments from both the newly elected president and J.D. Vance, the Ohio senator and incoming vice president, have done little to allay such fears.
Vance said: “If Donald J. Trump had lost an election, he could very well have spent the rest of his life in prison. These persecutions were always political in nature. Now is the time to ensure that what happened to President Trump will never happen again in this country.”
In a post on his own social media platform, Trump said all cases against him, including civil lawsuits in New York that resulted in millions of dollars in fines, were “empty and lawless” orchestrated by his Democratic enemies.
“It was a political hijacking,” Trump said, “and a low point in the history of our country that something like this could have happened, and yet I persevered, against all odds, and won.”
