Analysis: Case against Trump isn’t about his words. It’s about how he used them. | Opinion

The next several weeks and months will test John Adams’s maxim that ours is “a government of laws, not men.”

With most Republicans saying they would vote for Donald Trump for president, despite his having been indicted for nearly 80 felonies, America’s commitment to the rule of law, which is the foundation for our democracy, is at stake.

The rule of law requires presuming everyone innocent before they are proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but it is meaningful only if it applies to everyone, including the mightiest among us.

Nearly 50 years ago, Richard Nixon accepted the inevitability of his impeachment and resigned as president because the public and Congress believed, and the Supreme Court unanimously affirmed, that no one is above the law. Every president, Joe Biden included, has a duty, like every citizen does, to abide by the law or face the consequences. If Hunter Biden, as Republicans in Congress insist, is not entitled to any special treatment because he is the son of the president, the same should go for Trump. If it does not, the rule of law means nothing.

While Trump insists Biden is the real criminal, the claim hardly makes Trump innocent of the four crimes he has been charged with by Special Counsel Jack Smith, responsible for investigating efforts to undo the 2020 presidential election. Nor does it erase the considerable evidence the grand jury found in support of the four crimes for which Trump has been indicted — conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to obstruct and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding (the final certification of the presidential election in Congress), and attempting to thwart the votes of citizens for Joe Biden.

Trump, in other words, has been charged with criminally attempting to destroy our democracy, and the evidence comes directly from Trump’s own words and actions and the testimony of more than 70 people, nearly all of whom are Republicans who voted for Trump.

For example, in support of Trump’s indictment for conspiring “against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted,” it cites five means by which Trump and six co-conspirators pressed election officials to reverse votes for Biden to votes for Trump. They include recruiting fake electors in swing states to push lies about supposed election fraud and pushing Vice President Mike Pence to exercise power he did not have to delay certification of the election or reject legitimate electors.

The indictment asserts that, when Trump’s plan failed, he “exploited” the violence at the Capitol to push his false claims of election fraud. The indictment charging Trump with conspiring to defraud the United States rests on evidence of Trump and co-conspirator John Eastman repeatedly attempting to enlist the vice president to break the law to help Trump undo the election.

The indictments for corrupt obstruction of an official proceeding and the attempt to do so are the same charges for which hundreds of Trump supporters have already been convicted.

Trump’s defenses are political appeals to his base, not legal arguments. Besides complaining that President Biden and his son Hunter committed worse crimes than he ever did, Trump argues he had a good faith belief that he lost the election because of fraud.

Even if that were true, it is meaningless, since any such good faith belief does not excuse Trump from breaking the law. If I sincerely believed my local bank was improperly withholding my money, I am not entitled to rob or burglarize it to retrieve the money. My choice is to follow the law or not. Trump had the same choice. He attempted to criminally impede the peaceful transfer of power, even though he had been told his claims of fraud were false by multiple officials he had appointed, as well as by the Republican governor of Georgia and several Republican secretaries of state and election officials, all of whom voted for Trump.

Trump is in a legal mess of his own making.

It will not just be Trump on trial in the future. The American people and their commitment to the rule of law will be on trial. I for one hope we pass that test and remain “a government of laws,” not the former president’s men.