The Latest Trump Indictment Is the One That Really Counts

Minutes after special counsel Jack Smith’s team delivered the latest round of indictments against Donald J. Trump, detailing his criminal role in the events leading up to January 6, the disgraced ex-president’s campaign team compared the prosecution to the actions of Nazi Germany. It was a particularly inane comparison, designed to stir up a blood-curdling rage among The Donald’s cultist followers, and to intimidate any wavering GOP politicians who might be tempted to jump ship and say something—anything—even mildly critical of their 2024 presidential front-runner.

Let’s be clear: Trump, who is to appear in a federal court in D.C. on Thursday to answer to the charges, was indicted not at the whim of a dictatorship but after more than two years of precise, deliberate investigations, culminating in a determination by a grand jury—the bedrock institution of American justice—that he should be charged with criminal offenses. After failing to concede the 2020 election and triggering the biggest crisis to face America’s governing institutions since the Civil War, Trump isn’t facing a show trial but rather a jury of his peers—and then only after he has exhausted all legal avenues to delay the trial. Contrary to his bluster, he won’t even be prevented from running for the presidency while he is on trial. If he is ultimately convicted, the ex-president most certainly won’t be summarily executed, or tortured, or marched off to a concentration camp for domestic political prisoners—all of which were likely endpoints for German politicians who ran afoul of Hitler’s regime.