As Trump faces the first of several possible indictments from a Manhattan grand jury, we must affirm a core value that he rejects: No person is above the law.
When former President Donald Trump indicated that he expected to be arrested by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, he didn’t pledge to fight the charges in court, or promise to abide by the legal system. Instead, the former president and his supporters, including those in Congress, hysterically attacked the prosecutor and threatened to interfere in the investigation. Before seeing the indictment and underlying evidence, they denounced the prosecution as political and unfounded. And in a foreboding echo of his actions in the lead-up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Trump called for protests in a further attempt to undermine our democratic foundations.
As a former federal prosecutor and the lead counsel in the first impeachment of President Trump, I helped prove that he abused the power of the presidency by extorting Ukraine for his personal benefit. I then ran for Congress principally on a platform of preserving and protecting our democracy and the rule of law. As Trump faces the first of several possible indictments, we must affirm a core value that the former president rejects: No person is above the law.
The rule of law that underlies our democratic values finds its roots in the Greek philosopher Aristotle, who stated: “Passion influences those who are in power … Law is reason without desire.” Our second president John Adams stressed the importance of this concept for our fledgling democracy, insisting that “it may be a government of laws and not of men.
