What did Donald Trump do today?
He escaped justice for the crimes he's already been convicted of.
Trump will take office as a convicted felon, having been found guilty in May by a New York jury of 34 counts related to fraudulent business records. The judge in that case, Juan Merchan, delayed sentencing until after the election, and has now decided to postpone it indefinitely.
It is not yet clear whether Trump can still be sentenced when and if he next leaves office.
Trump's lawyers are now claiming that Trump, both while president and as a private citizen who has not yet taken office, is "completely immune from any criminal process."
He is also under indictment in three other separate criminal cases: for stealing and refusing to return highly classified documents, interfering in Georgia's electoral process in an attempt to invalidate or change the outcome of the 2020 election, and taking part in a broad conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election on a national level, including by disrupting the official certification by Congress on January 6, 2021.
Trump has promised to seek revenge against the Justice Department officials and law enforcement officers who brought charges in those cases, and has threatened at one point or another to jail almost everyone who opposed him politically.
Why does this matter?
- No one is above the law or "completely immune from any criminal process" in a democracy.
- Using the power of the state to take revenge for "crimes" against the leader is literally fascism.