Should Trump be convicted in the Manhattan case or any other of the investigations happening, there is nothing that would stop him from continuing his campaign for president.

Possibly the nation’s worst president, Woodrow Wilson, signed the Sedition Act of 1918 during World War I, which criminalized speech deemed to be disloyal to the United States government. The most high-profile person convicted was Debs, a perennial presidential candidate for the Socialist Party since 1900. He was sentenced to 10 years in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, but that didn’t stop him from running for president in 1920 and winning 919,799 votes — or 3.4 percent of the popular vote — from behind bars. Wilson’s successor, Warren G. Harding, gave a Christmas commutation to Debs in 1921.

It seems likely that if Bragg could have nailed Trump for disloyal speech, or even speeding in his stretch limo, he would have. A sex scandal will have to do for now.

Yet far more so than in the cases of Grant and Debs, the proverbial glass has been broken.

[When incentives like this get set, no one should be surprised when people respond to them. That’s why it’s dangerous to break precedents like this, especially for the ticky-tack records violations Bragg is pursuing. — Ed]