Liberals, stop waiting for Trump to get convicted

In short, substantively, none of these cases is a slam dunk. Are they provable in court? For sure. And were Trump an ordinary defendant, these quanta of proof might suffice.

But Trump is no ordinary defendant, and that makes all the difference. Criminal cases are hard to prove generally. High-profile criminal convictions are even more difficult to pull off, and especially so when a case has political overtones. Many political defendants have resources that exceed those of the prosecution. They also have a platform from which they can trumpet their innocence, controlling the media coverage and shaping public opinion in ways that the prosecution cannot.

But perhaps most significant, criminal defendants with public profiles typically enjoy a more robust presumption of innocence than everyday criminals do. In theory, of course, everyone who is charged with a crime has the same presumption. But the grim reality is that, for many quotidian crimes, the prosecutor has the substantial advantage of knowing that this isn’t true. For almost every case I ever brought, I could be sure that the jury began the trial thinking, There has to be something here or they wouldn’t be wasting my time.