The writer was US deputy attorney-general under George HW Bush. Norman Eisen, White House special counsel in the Barack Obama administration, also contributed
Tuesday’s indictment of Donald Trump is a turning point of enormous importance for the US — and for the global community of democracies.
On January 6 2021, we witnessed the appalling culmination of an organised effort to overturn the outcome of a free and fair election. Since then, it has been far from clear to many people in the US and around the world that the American system of government has what it takes to effectively deal with the nefarious conduct of a wilful demagogue.
However, the indictment delivered this week is the greatest demonstration yet that our system is, after all, up to the task. In its 45 pages it tells one story in a very readable way — the story of how Trump “[d]espite having lost, . . . was determined to remain in power. So for more than two months following election day [he] spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won” and went on to commit crimes that would have made the false claim a reality.
Its allegations, if proved, show beyond any doubt that Trump knew he had lost, and that, working together with six precisely described but unnamed co-conspirators, he spearheaded a series of systematic efforts to change the outcome.
Those efforts are spelt out with great specificity that foreshadows the evidence that the prosecutors are ready to put before the jury. They include: extensive activities and intimidation aimed at convincing officials in seven states to alter the legitimate vote counts without any basis; the organisation and submission of fraudulent slates of state electors that could be relied on to alter the outcome of the election; repeated attempts to intimidate officials in the Department of Justice to convince state officials to replace legitimate electors with electors supportive of Trump; and tireless efforts to intimidate the vice-president Mike Pence to fraudulently alter the electoral vote count on January 6.
And when all of these efforts fell short, Trump, the indictment alleges, used the violence of the mob that he had invited to Capitol Hill on January 6 as one last tool to change Pence’s mind, or to at least delay the proceeding. It will be highly notable that Trump is at the centre of all these manoeuvres. It will also prove important that his persistent efforts were resisted even by many of his closest advisers, but went forward anyway on the strength of his will.
This indictment is so important because it officially calls the former president to account at the criminal bar for the most important wrongs that he is alleged to have committed — the efforts to subvert the democratic electoral system on which America’s existence as a nation is based.
It does so with charges that fit the conduct like a glove. The first charge is of a conspiracy to defraud the US by subverting its interests in a free and fair election. The second and third are conspiracy to obstruct, and obstruction of, the official proceeding at which the electoral votes were to be counted on January 6. And the fourth, fittingly brought under the Ku Klux Klan statute enacted after the Civil War to protect against abuse of freed former slaves, alleges the no less appalling conspiracy to deny the civil rights of all Americans to have their votes counted fairly.
The indictment is important not only to Americans. Contemplating the spectacle, the US’s allies were right to wonder if they could continue to count upon it to play a global leadership role — including on democracy issues. This week’s powerful pushback by our constitutional rule of law system should be profoundly reassuring on that front.
Of course there remains much to do in the case. And ultimately, the charges against Trump must come to trial and the government must deliver proof of what it claims that satisfies a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. The defendant can be counted on to do whatever he can to prevent that from happening.
But the grand jury has had its say, and the story is a very powerful one. And the case is in the hands of an excellent judge — a former public defender who has already handled an important case against Trump in which she rejected his efforts to block the investigation of the January 6 committee.
For people and nations who worried that this day would never come, there is reason for optimism that Trump may finally be made to answer for the worst of what he has done. That is good news for American democracy — and for America’s democratic allies the world over.