Quinta Jurecic, The Atlantic: “During his time in office, Trump did his best to transform the Vance investigation into a referendum on his expansive vision of executive power by challenging Vance’s right to subpoena the financial information of a sitting president. Now, even as Trump has receded into postpresidential life, it’s still tempting to see the Trump Organization indictment as a test of the legal system’s ability to grapple with Trump’s odiousness. But despite Trump’s efforts to flatten the investigation into a plebiscite on whether you like or dislike the former president – he has called the prosecution an attack on the ’75M[illion] Voters and Patriots’ who supported him in November – the case is not a symbol or a metaphor. It’s a criminal prosecution, which will succeed, or not, on the strength of the particular evidence at hand. The more it hardens into a symbol, the more difficult it will be for prosecutors to avoid the perception that they are going after Trump just because he’s Trump. Letitia James’s failure to recuse herself from the investigation, despite comments from before she took office accusing Trump of criminal conduct, add to that complication.”
“Investigators are clearly conscious of the tightrope they have to walk. ‘Politics has no role in the grand jury chamber,’ Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Carey Dunne told the judge on Thursday, ‘and I can assure your honor that it played no role here.’ Would prosecutors have started this investigation, and brought this case, if Trump had not been president? There’s no real way to know: Trump’s presidency inevitably turned a spotlight on his business dealings. Perhaps things might have been different if he had been willing to disentangle his personal financial interests from his role as president. But then, of course, he wouldn’t have been Trump. Seen another way, though, it says a great deal that it took Trump’s elevation to the nation’s highest office in order for anyone to pay attention to the level of apparent grift within his organization.”