A former federal prosecutor took it upon herself on Thanksgiving eve to lift up anyone feeling glum about the state of the country’s legal system in the face of Donald Trump swapping any criminal consequences as he instead plots his return to the White House.
Joyce Vance told readers on Wednesday that it might feel like Trump has shattered the rule of law beyond recognition, but she cautioned against sinking into despair by the head-spinning legal developments occurring in the three weeks since Election Day.
“Democrats may have lost the last election, but that’s not the same thing as losing the Republic,” Vance wrote in her “Civil Discourse” newsletter. “Far from it. And Donald Trump has not broken the rule of law. He has tortured it and stretched it out of shape insofar as it applies to him. But he has not broken it, and he has not broken us. He cannot do that unless we let him, and I don’t intend to let him.”
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Vance continued her analysis of Trump’s legal saga – which effectively ended this week when special counsel Jack Smith filed a motion to drop charges related to his 2020 election interference case – by saying that the American electorate gave Trump his get-out-of-jail-free card.
The legal system, she said, “needs work."
"It needs refinement so that someone like Trump can’t play games and escape accountability," she wrote. "But Trump gets that pass because of the singular foolishness of a majority of our fellow citizens in reelecting him. Had he lost, his cases would have proceeded to trial and justice would have been done. The fault, as distressing as it is, lies at least in part with the electorate.”
But the system has not been “irreparably broke[n]” by Trump, Vance wrote. And while she added that there is no "cavalry" coming to rescue the many disaffected by Trump’s stunning electoral victory, she wrote that she was “thankful we’re together for it.”
She concluded her newsletter by encouraging readers who may feel “betrayed by a country that reelected the convicted felon” to not give up the fight.
“History teaches us that progress is not linear and that people who want to have a democracy, who understand that it's worth fighting for, have to stay the course even at their lowest point,” she wrote.
