Is this really what accountability for Trump looks like? The politics of the last few dreadful years strongly suggest otherwise. Sure, there will be hearings—in a New York City courtroom, in impressively gilded congressional committee chambers. But Trump and his conspirators are experts by now at the art of the dodge. The playbook is achingly familiar: they will discredit the investigators, discredit the media, disavow the facts, invent alternative realities. There will be enemies and distractions and confusing subplots to make us forget about the damning basic facts. Both Democrats and Republicans will come away with an issue to take to their base in next year’s midterm elections. Maybe Weisselberg will end up in jail; maybe he won’t. Until and unless prosecutors decide to charge Trump, too, he will remain free to travel the country, selling personal and political grievance as his message. The day before his company was taken to court, Trump appeared in Texas, spinning lies about his unbuilt border wall and his unwon Presidential campaign. This weekend, he is supposed to appear at a rally in Florida, notwithstanding the state of mourning for the loss of life in Surfside and pleas from the state’s very pro-Trump governor to cancel. Millions will continue to cheer him on as he fantasizes about being “reinstated” to the Presidency. But one certitude at an uncertain moment is that that, at least, will not happen. Elections still have consequences in this country, and this is the accountability that no amount of Trump’s lies has been able to obscure. The simple truth is that Trump lost in 2020, and neither he, nor anyone, can undo it. Joe Biden lives at the White House now. That may not be a punishment fit for all of Donald Trump’s wrongdoing, but a punishment it surely is.