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News / Opinion / Columns

Estrich: Moving beyond the new normal

By Susan Estrich

Published: August 5, 2023, 6:01am

There was a time when the mere whiff of an indictment — let alone the reality of one — was enough to sink a promising candidate.

Today, what do we call it when a new four-count indictment gets returned?

Easy. We call it Tuesday.

That’s the new normal.

It’s the new normal because, frankly, what difference does it make?

I couldn’t help but notice that on the same day the former president got indicted, he also won a juicy inside fight in the Republican Party to institute a winner-take-all primary in California if the victor in the state’s Super Tuesday primary gets 50 percent of the vote — which was the option favored by the Donald Trump camp and opposed by the Ron DeSantis folks. Once he got his way, Trump announced that he’d be speaking at the state GOP convention. A nice sweetener for the former president who is playing the inside rules game for all it’s worth, even as he’s playing these indictments as best he can.

Sure, they have an impact. For starters, there may be a spike in fundraising, if not also in the polls.

And of course you can watch the other candidates squirm like worms as they react to Joe Biden’s Justice Department, which is how they (and they alone) describe Jack Smith, otherwise known as Trump’s Tormentor, this time with the background of the House Jan. 6 committee report laying the groundwork for the indictment.

But it’s mostly become part of the electoral process, part of the political calendar. So when the reporters detail what is happening, the upcoming contests, they now refer as a matter of course both to the primaries and caucuses, and the various arraignments and hearings, and how they will play out across the calendar. You know, the Iowa caucus, then the Alvin Bragg hearing, then perhaps the New Hampshire primary and perhaps a hearing in the Miami documents case … Why not?

Or rather, what’s to stop it?

This is not show and tell.

This is not an episode of “Night Court.”

It may be the new normal, but there is really nothing normal about it. These are serious charges Trump is facing.

What are his defenses to all of these crimes? I’m struck when I read former prosecutors speculating that the indictments have the former president “dead to rights.” Maybe they do, by the book. But we all understand the magic of convincing every single juror to convict, even the reluctant one that Trump is counting on. Jury nullification, it is called, when a jury refuses to convict, notwithstanding the facts and the law. You know the Don believes that his jurors will stand with him.

Still, how many reluctant jurors like that are there for him to count on — in Florida and in New York and in the District of Columbia and in Georgia and who knows where else — to spare him the judgment of his peers?

Can he really count on the courts to delay these trials long enough for him to secure the Republican nomination?

Treating the charges as normal is one thing. But there is nothing normal about what comes next in this process, and how long this game can play out this way is anyone’s guess. But for now, at least, it’s the new normal.

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