After years of thrill-kill prosecutions, the thrill is gone for lawfare warriors.
Election Day’s greatest losers may be special counsel Jack Smith, New York Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Donald Trump’s victory was the largest jury verdict that some of us anticipated for years of unrelenting weaponization of the legal system.
Smith’s prosecutions ended with the 270th Electoral College vote secured around 2 a.m. Wednesday. His unrelenting efforts to convict Trump and then, when prevented from holding a trial, to release damaging material before the election have collapsed with the blue wall in the Midwest.
Trump has said he plans to fire Smith on Day 1. That means the end of both the January 6 and the classified documents cases.
Another election case in Georgia has been suspended and is unlikely to continue.
That leaves James and Bragg as residue of long-forgotten lawfare battles, but even there Trump’s prospects look good.
James was able to secure a fellow lawfare warrior in Justice Arthur Engoron, who imposed a grotesque $455 million in fines and interest.
That ruling is pending an appeal that is expected to be a partial or even total victory for Trump.
Unlike Engoron, the appellate judges expressed great skepticism in September over the size of the penalty and even the use of this law.
Trump faced half a billion dollars in penalty in a case where no one lost a dime, and the alleged victim banks wanted more business with Trump and his company.
Separately, there is a hearing scheduled in front of Judge Juan Merchan for Nov. 11 on the “hush money” case involving Stormy Daniels, and a possible sentencing on Nov. 26.
If Merchan seeks to jail Trump, it is unlikely to be carried out, as Trump appeals the case and the many alleged errors committed by the judge.
Merchan made an utter mess of a case that should never have been filed, let alone tried. Even commentators like CNN’s senior legal analyst, Elie Honig, have denounced the case as selective prosecution and unfounded.
The case should result in a conditional discharge with no jail time if Merchan can resist the temptation to unjustly punish Trump, a level of restraint that has largely proven difficult for him in the case.
Merchan created layers of appealable errors in the case. Putting those alleged errors aside, any sentencing to jail would create its own constitutional conflict with Trump’s performance of his federal duties.
The question is whether the election will bring a moment of sobriety for New Yorkers who have spent years in a full rage-driven celebration of lawfare.
While Trump did not prevail in New York, he came closer than any Republican in decades.
After this steady diet of politicized prosecutions in New York, Trump secured 44.3% of the vote, while Harris received 55.7%. In 2020, the margin was 23 points.
It is doubtful that the election will completely kill the appetite for lawfare in New York. As I wrote in my recent book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” “rage is liberating, even addictive. It allows us to say and do things that we would ordinarily avoid, even denounce in others.”
What people do not want to admit that is that they like the rage.
Rage addicts will continue to push James and Bragg to continue these unhinged campaigns. It is not prosecutorial — it is recreational.
We can only hope that James and Bragg feel a twinge of humility when their cases fall apart along with the Kamala Harris campaign.
And Merchan has the opportunity to use this brief sobering moment and issue a conditional discharge without home or actual confinement.
He can take judicial notice of Trump’s election as our next president and end this circus in Manhattan.
Instead of listening to the braying mob, he can act as a judge and tell New Yorkers, in the immortal words of B.B. King:
“The thrill is gone
It’s gone away for good
All the thrill is gone
Baby, it’s gone away for good
…
I’m free from your spell
And now that it’s all over
All that I can do is wish you well.”
Jonathan Turley is a Fox News Media contributor and the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”