We’ve seen politicians go to jail. We’ve seen a vice president of the United States — Spiro Agnew — resign to avoid any chance of going to jail. We have seen President Richard Nixon pardoned in order to keep him out of jail.
What we have never seen is a former president of the United States in jail. But now that is a real possibility, because Donald Trump can’t shut up and abide by a simple gag order.
Justice Juan Merchan has repeatedly tried to enforce his gag order with fines. Trump pays the fines and keeps violating the gag order.
Merchan, who is overseeing Trump’s New York trial on charges of election interference through the use of hush money, has said he has no interest in making history by putting Trump behind bars.
“Mr. Trump, it is important to understand the last thing I want to do is put you in jail,” Merchan said last week. “You are the former president of the United States and possibly the next one as well.”
“The magnitude of that decision is not lost on me. But at the end of the day, I have a job to do,” he said, “and that job is to protect the dignity of the judicial system.” He added: “If necessary and appropriate under the circumstance, [the court] will impose punishment,” by which he meant jail.
The judge’s job is to protect witnesses and jurors from intimidation. The damage Trump is doing with his public outbursts is chilling.
There is a grinding pattern here in every court he enters. Congress, prosecutors and judges all recoil from ever holding Trump legally responsible — even for possible criminal behavior — for fear of being charged with getting involved in politics.
That has emboldened Trump, to the point that now he ignores a gag order as he taunts witnesses, jurors, judges and prosecutors.
He impugns the justice system with false rants about how President Biden is using the courts as a political tool to keep him off the campaign trail.
And out of fear of angering Trump, most officials in the Republican party are buying his lies.
As a result, the country is now risking its founding principle that America is a nation of laws in which all men face equal justice.
Trump has never been punished for trying to orchestrate state officials to manufacture votes in order to stop the transfer of power to Biden. He saw no reprimand for his role in the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6. His escape from justice is evident in his ongoing refusal to admit he lost the 2020 election.
There is more risk on the horizon because he makes no promise to accept defeat in 2024. And at political rallies, he continues to fuel the fire by telling his political followers that if he ever gets back in the Oval Office, he will be “your retribution,” against his political opponents.
Last year he also pledged to “root out” fellow Americans who are critical of him, “the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” That included threats to NBC News and other news outlets. He called them “the enemy of the people,” and threatened to have them “pay a big price.”
And he derides America as “a failing nation,” even as the U.S. enjoys the strongest economy in the world.
Trump’s contempt for the justice system is evident in his use of a “mug shot,” taken after he was indicted in Georgia for election interference. He has made the picture into a symbol of his defiance of the justice system.
His followers now fabricate additional mug shots of him using artificial intelligence. Trump’s campaign displayed one phony mug shot and labeled it “NOT GUILTY.” That kind of fundraising casually damages trust in the justice system.
One brass fact has set America apart from the rest of the world for its 248 years of independence: We never put a head of state behind bars.
Other modern Western liberal democracies have seen their presidents and prime ministers held accountable by their criminal justice systems.
In 2013, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was convicted of tax fraud and sentenced to four years in prison.
French President Jacques Chirac was convicted of corruption in 2011. His successor, Nickolas Sarkozy, was convicted of campaign-related crimes and sentenced to a suspended prison sentence earlier this year. Israeli President Ehud Olmert was convicted on corruption charges and served time in prison.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faced trial for corruption while his country was at war.
We need to brace ourselves for seeing a former president behind bars.
Sixty-five percent of registered voters predict Trump will be convicted on some of the nearly three dozen state felony charges in his trial in New York City.
“The poll sets expectations going into the remainder of the trial and the verdict in terms of what voters see…” David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, told Fox News.
Just last week, Trump invited disgraced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich — whom he pardoned after the governor served jail time for trying to sell President Obama’s Senate seat — to share the stage with him.
This is all so unbelievable. It seems like a big joke. But the damage being done to America is a tragedy.
Juan Williams is an author and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.