I have to confess that I’ve been waiting for this moment since September 8, 1974. When Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon on that day he knocked American democracy off-kilter. “No one is above the law” is the foundational rule for a functional democracy. But with Nixon’s pardon, that inviolable rule had been replaced by, as Nixon infamously quipped, “When the President does it, that means it is not illegal.” Nixon’s principle was followed in 1987 when the Iran Contra affair came to light but President Ronald Reagan was never held to account. All of that led inexorably to the spectacle of a President Donald Trump who regularly appeared to get away with violations of election law, the prohibition against receiving emoluments, obstruction of the Mueller investigation, and finally, fomenting a violent insurrection and attempting to submit fake electors in an effort to subvert a free and fair election.
Today the Manhattan District Attorney has reset the American Experiment to its most fundamental tenet: No one is above the law.