The electoral argument against holding Trump legally accountable boils down to a prediction that indictment will boost his chances in 2024. I think it’s wrong to base law enforcement decisions on political guesses, but if you think they should take precedence, prosecution is more likely to hurt Trump’s chances than help.
“As we’ve seen in the aftermath of the Mar-a-Lago search,” Mona Charen writes in The Bulwark, “giving Trump a colorable case for ‘persecution’ by the Democrats is a huge gift.”
Is it? Who is it helping him with?
Remember which voters are most likely to decide elections. Not committed Trumpists, who may get angrier, but can vote only once. Nor other partisan Republicans, who might say they’d prefer a different nominee, but will turn out to vote GOP regardless. We’re talking about independents, swing voters, and occasional voters who tend not to follow politics closely.
These voters, on balance, think being under indictment is bad, not good. It signals to the general public that the alleged criminal really did do something wrong—that it wasn’t just political bluster, and the feds actually have a case. If a fraction of the 16 percent of Republicans who think the Mar-a-Lago search was motivated by evidence of a crime feel validated by a prosecution and switch to anti-Trump, that could swing elections.
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