ADAM SCHIFF: IF ONLY WE’D PROSECUTED TRUMP EARLIER. The Democratic lawfare campaigns against President Donald Trump — two federal prosecutions, an indictment in Georgia, an indictment and conviction in New York, a damaging lawsuit, also in New York — are still having repercussions today. In some cases, the legal wrangling goes on, while in others, some of the lawfare perpetrators, such as New York Attorney General Letitia James, have found themselves under investigation by the Trump Justice Department.
On top of that, there are Democratic regrets. No, not regrets about having prosecuted Trump. Instead, some Democrats regret that they did not prosecute Trump faster. If only they had gone after Trump earlier, they believe, maybe they could have convicted and imprisoned him before he had a chance to win the presidency again in 2024.
Just look at Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff, who in 2019 rushed to impeach Trump over the Ukraine matter in hopes that it would make it impossible for Trump to win reelection in 2020. Today, Schiff looks back at Trump’s four years out of office and wonders what might have been had Democrats hit Trump earlier.
“Do you feel that [then-Attorney General] Merrick Garland moved too slowly?” New Yorker editor David Remnick asked Schiff on the New Yorker Radio Hour last week. “I absolutely do, yeah,” said Schiff. “Why did Garland move so slowly?” asked Remnick. “What about his character or tactics or strategy led him to behave that way?”
“The Justice Department in the first Trump [administration] was abused and made partisan,” Schiff said, “and [Garland] wished to restore the reputation of the department for strict non-partisanship. And that made him very reluctant to pursue an investigation of the president — too reluctant.”
“Ultimately, that gave the Supreme Court the time it needed to drag things out further and make the case against Trump go away completely, when it could have been brought to fruition,” Schiff concluded. “And we might be in a very different place today.”
That’s the story: If only Garland had gone after Trump earlier, the Supreme Court wouldn’t have had time to rule on the question of immunity, and there would be no President Trump today. A simple solution.
What to say? First, without any doubt, the prosecutions of Trump increased Republican support for the former president. Remember that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), running against Trump in the 2024 GOP primaries, said the indictments “sucked all of the oxygen” out of the Republican race. Democratic lawfare made Trump more popular and absolutely unbeatable in a GOP contest.
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As far as the general election is concerned, besides boosting Republican intensity, it’s hard to say that the great Democratic lawfare project had any effect on 2024 voting. There were critical issues, such as inflation, immigration, and crime, and voters looked at their choices — first Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, and then Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris — and decided that Trump was the better candidate. Democrats were not helped by the fact that Biden was senile, and no Democrat would admit what millions of voters could see with their own eyes.
But still, Adam Schiff looks back and sees a glorious outcome in which Garland and the Biden Justice Department supercharged a speedy Trump investigation, pushed the Supreme Court to the side, and convicted and imprisoned Trump before Election Day. With the Republican favorite in jail, Democrats kept control of the White House, and GOP voters accepted it with resignation because, after all, no man is above the law. A senator can dream, can’t he?
