For a moment earlier this year, it looked as though his luck might finally be running out. Donald Trump, who had spent his life evading due accountability, suddenly found himself facing nearly 100 felony charges for his handling of classified documents, his efforts to subvert the 2020 election, and a hush-money scheme. The latter gave way to his historic conviction on 34 counts in the spring. His run for a second term seemed as much a desperate effort to stay out of the big house as it was to get back into the White House.
But it wasn’t long before the wheels of justice started to slow: Jack Smith’s federal election interference case was subjected to delay tactics; his classified-documents case was also slow-walked, and eventually tossed, by the Trump-appointed judge Aileen Cannon, whose name made a list of prospective attorney general nominees; the Georgia RICO case was upended by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s romantic relationship with one of her prosecutors; and, in September, Judge Juan Merchan postponed sentencing in his hush-money case until after the election.
If his prosecutions were already on life support, Trump’s stunning election last week all but killed them—a bitter reality reflected by a report Wednesday that Smith is planning to step down from his role before the president-elect takes office in January. According to the New York Times, Smith—who has been baselessly accused by Trump and his allies of conducting “lawfare” on behalf of Democrats—is looking to wrap his work in the coming weeks, and will resign, along with members of his team. How, exactly, he will close his two cases is unclear. But what is certain is that they will not make it to trial.
The coming resignation, then, is unlikely to have any impact on Trump’s legal issues, which were already rendered moot by his victory; after all, Trump said in October, before his reelection, that he would “fire [Smith] within two seconds” of taking office anyway. “He’ll be one of the first things addressed,” Trump said.
But Smith’s departure will underscore Trump’s unaccountability. The special counsel set out to show that nobody is above the law, not even former presidents; instead, Trump is more emboldened than ever, with the Supreme Court having endowed the office he’ll soon occupy with expansive, extralegal powers in a ruling this summer on one of Smith’s cases.
That impunity will likely extend beyond Trump himself to those who work for him—from the roster of radicals he’s assembling to help make good on his extreme agenda to Elon Musk, whose ill-defined role as a government “efficiency” czar could give him control over those regulating his own businesses. Indeed, Trump and his administration could be free to operate with little legal or legislative constraint for at least the next two years: The Supreme Court, with its six-member conservative majority, has already proved deferential to Trump. And the Republican-controlled House and Senate are unlikely to check his power but may instead help him realize its full potential.
Trump’s first term was a hotbed of corruption. Having gotten away with it all, his second is sure to be worse.
