On Thursday afternoon, Donald Trump made history as the first former president to become a convicted felon. The conviction on all 34 counts related to a hush money payment upends almost everything about politics as usual and quickly triggered an avalanche of questions about the 2024 election. Can Trump still run for president? (Yes.) Can I vote? (Maybe, maybe not.)
.jpg)
But what else is in store after this truly unprecedented event in American history?
We reached out to a group of top political minds and historians to ask them what they think the single biggest consequence of Trump's conviction will be. They covered this fall's election, of course, including the verdict's impact on independents and down-ballot races. But they also looked ahead to the effect this verdict could have on American democracy and Americans' trust in institutions in the longer term.
“The fact that one of the two men likely to be president next year is now a convicted felon sets up the possibility that those very same judicial institutions that guarantee the rule of law will come under the most ferocious political attack in our history,” one contributor predicted.
The rule of law will come under the most ferocious political attack in our history'
BY TIMOTHY JAMES NAFTALI
Timothy James Naftali is a historian and senior research scholar at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.
The guilty verdict cuts in two dramatically different ways. On the one hand, it is a powerful demonstration that in this country even a former head of state can be indicted and convicted by a group of his peers. There could hardly be a more dramatic barometer of the strength of the rule of law and of our judicial institutions.
On the other hand, the fact that one of the two men likely to be president next year is now a convicted felon sets up the possibility that those very same judicial institutions that guarantee the rule of law will come under the most ferocious political attack in our history. We can expect Trump to use the Republican Party for the remainder of the campaign to trash our judicial system. We can expect that most, if not all, Republican candidates will echo candidate Trump's poisonous views about the fairness of the rule of law, creating national and local politics of a toxicity that we haven't seen since the “stop the steal” campaign of 2020.
As a result, it is too soon to assess the long-term consequences for the rule of law of the first conviction of a former U.S. president. Those consequences will be decided by a different verdict, the one that the American people will make collectively at the polls in November.