That, in my opinion, is really a terrible thing to contemplate – that they’re actually manipulating an aspect of the system that exists, perhaps wrongly, because the delays, you know, are pretty crazy sometimes – but it’s still a component of our legal system that aims to get it right. And they corrupt that and exploit it.
Seligman: That’s absolutely correct. And Donald Trump may have been the greatest beneficiary in history of the slow pace of justice, because the reason he wasn’t convicted in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case — and, in my view, in the January 6 case in Washington as well — is because those cases didn’t go to fruition. There was never a trial.
And the reason the charges against him were dropped is not because he was totally and completely exonerated, as he often likes to claim, but because he was re-elected president. Now you can look back at this process from January 20, 2021 to January 20, 2025, and you can see parts of this process that I think should have been faster.
It took 18 months for Jack Smith to be appointed special adviser. Those 18 months, you know, in my opinion, were just completely unnecessary, especially regarding the January 6 affair. Again, we saw it on TV. The man was indicted and almost convicted. There were seven Republicans in the Senate who voted to convict Donald Trump on impeachment and bar him from any future federal office. And so, you know, the fact that the process went slowly there – well, it went a little bit slower than even the requirements of due process require. And also, it’s very plausible that Donald Trump is back in the White House just because of these delays.
And now if you look again at what’s happening now: Lindsey Halligan, what consequences will she face, and when? You know, we’ve already seen that Donald Trump is willing to reward his lawyers with federal judgeships if they do his bidding. We now see the radical Emil Bove in the Third Circuit, even though he, according to several whistleblowers, told his Justice Department subordinates to ignore court rulings and lie to the courts.
So if I’m Lindsey Halligan, you know, okay, maybe I’m not, you know, acting within the ethical bounds of a lawyer’s role – but that seems like an antiquated standard to apply in this new, brave new world that we live in.
Sergeant: You know, I think you also discover a very dark irony that underlies all of this, which is that the whole claim about the weaponization of Trump is really, really horrible when you step back and consider the idea that Donald Trump probably benefited more than any living human being from expensive, high-quality lawyers, who themselves underwrote the delays that allowed Trump to escape justice and with the Court supreme who also had a hand in this. Can you talk about it? I find it really infuriating. This is a guy who has benefited more than anyone from the justice system that actually grants rights to the accused. And we are told that he is the victim of a massive militarization project? It’s infuriating and you have to try to figure out if he really believes it or not.
Seligman: I think that’s probably the case, because he has a huge persecution complex. But at the end of the day, aside from his inner monologue, the fact remains that yes, he benefited from the protections of the criminal justice system, from very effective lawyers. Say what you will about Todd Blanche and Emil Bove: they are very technically talented lawyers. And they were able to use the system to delay, and Donald Trump was certainly the beneficiary.
And then when you look at the other side – what happened immediately before the installation of Lindsey Halligan as Trump’s lackey in the Eastern District of Virginia, and then the subsequent indictments of James Comey and Letitia James – is that Donald Trump, publicly on social media and in interviews, insisted that it wasn’t happening fast enough. You have to go, go, go. “This destroys our credibility with the base,” he said on Truth Social, in a message that may have been intended as a private message to Pam Bondi.
So he doesn’t have much respect for the niceties of due process when he’s at the helm of the federal government. It’s kind of an interesting variation on the old adage about the authoritarian approach to the rule of law, that all is for my friends – and for my enemies, the law. And his version is this: everything for me and for my enemies, the law.
So he’s trying to use the criminal justice system – and abuse it – in the same way he benefited from not abusing that criminal justice system when he was accused.
Sergeant: RIGHT. In fact, it’s all for me and my enemies. corrupt law, if you think about it.
Seligman: Yeah, that’s exactly it. I mean, how can you, if we step back a little bit, how can you think that the prosecution of Donald Trump for what we saw on television on January 6th, you know, from his speech on the oval on the ellipse to the storming of the Capitol and then what we know is that the Republicans said out loud after that about what he had done, that he had refused to send in the National Guard and so on. How can you think this was a politicized prosecution, when it’s not a politicized prosecution when Donald Trump fires career lawyers and then demands on social media that his political opponents be prosecuted. As this split screen tells you everything you need to know.
Sergeant: RIGHT. Well, the lawsuits filed in Trump’s name and consistent with what he wants are inherently non-corrupt and intrinsically good. Just to wrap things up, Matt, let’s kind of fast forward a few years maybe. My guess is that most lawsuits against Trump’s enemies probably end up failing. Letitia James, James Comey, maybe Adam Schiff too. Perhaps all of these are discarded in one way or another or simply fail in the long run. But we are nonetheless faced with a level of corruption within the Justice Department that is probably unprecedented in half a century. I’m sure I’ll be nitpicked for this one, but let’s just say we think it is. What is happening in the long term here? Is there anything resembling the rule of law on the other side?
Seligman: I think the answer is yes, but people might criticize me for being unrealistically optimistic. So I actually think your choice to go back 50 years is really telling here, and it actually gives me a paradoxical sense of hope.
So the 50 years you were talking about goes back to Richard Nixon.And Richard Nixon did attempt to weaponize the United States’ national security apparatus and law enforcement capabilities. Now, the way he tried to go after his enemies – you know, the famous enemies list – one of the main ways he tried to do that was by using the IRS to investigate people’s taxes. And ultimately his IRS commissioner refused to do it and pushed back, and so it didn’t go too far.
But the idea behind it was that if you look closely at someone’s taxes, it’s likely they made a mistake in some way. And so conservative libertarians like to say – you know, there have been books written about this – that if you look at someone’s life, they’ve probably committed a federal crime every day, just because there are so many criminal laws.
