Elections are supposed to be decided at the ballot box, not in the courtroom — unless you’re French, or, in this country, a liberal.
What a judge in France has just done by disqualifying Marine Le Pen from running in that nation’s next presidential election is what Democrats dream of doing here.
The controversial populist was ahead in the polls, but now Le Pen isn’t even eligible to run, thanks to a court that found her guilty of using European Union funds to pay for political expenses.
She insists the spending was legitimate, but as things stand French voters won’t get to decide for themselves who’s right.
Americans might feel safe from this kind of lawfare — when New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg went after President Donald Trump on campaign-finance technicalities, he won his case but lost his gambit.
The nakedly political prosecution only added to the momentum propelling Trump back to office, and in our country voters, not judges, get the final word: Bragg’s convictions couldn’t stop the Republican from running, and winning.
Yet, in many ways, the lawfare Democrats waged during and after Trump’s first term succeeded.
The price of serving in a Republican administration has gone up, with incoming staffers urged to buy legal insurance to cover the costs of defending against lawfare.
“It’s edging into absolute requirement territory,” an official who served in Trump’s first administration told NBC News in January.
“It would be reckless” to do without the insurance, he continued, “if you have any assets to protect — the house, college funds, whatever.”
The legal bills from complying with — never mind fighting — federal investigations or congressional inquiries can be ruinous, as first-term Trump personnel discovered.
Lawfare isn’t just a legal weapon, it’s economic warfare, and the threat of it is a deterrent to anyone considering working for Trump.
But it won’t stop with Trump: Whatever succeeds against his administration will be used against every future Republican White House, too.
You don’t even have to serve in government to be a target.
Some of the most powerful institutions of the legal establishment not only supported the lawfare against Trump but also, after the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, punished lawyers who dared represent anyone questioning the 2020 election.
In one of the defining early moments of the American Revolution, John Adams went to court to defend the British soldiers who perpetrated the Boston Massacre.
Even they deserved respectable legal representation — but Trump and his associates, in the eyes of Big Law, did not.
Once back in office, Trump’s response was to threaten these powerful firms with losing access to government privileges, from security clearances to permission to enter federal buildings — the settings for their lobbying activity.
(It’s surprising that progressives, who often view lobbying as inherently corrupt, didn’t cheer Trump on for this.)
Firms like Paul Weiss and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom were quick to come to agreements with the president on how they could change their ways.
Yet what happens once Trump is gone?
Had he lost last year’s election, Trump would likely have been sent to prison by his enemies, and other Republicans would have been next on the legal hit list.
If Democrats win back the House next year, they’ll use Congress’ investigative powers to turn this administration inside-out, forcing testimony on every contentious policy and practice that Trump officials have implemented since Day 1.
And if the Republicans don’t hold the White House in 2028, the kinds of political prosecutions that would have happened this year if Kamala Harris had won will take place four years from now.
Voters said no to lawfare as loudly as possible last November, awarding Trump every presidential battleground state, a popular-vote plurality and GOP control of both chambers of Congress.
But to break bad habits of lawfare will take more than one election cycle.
Democrats themselves have begun complaining that Biden officials can’t get the legal representation they want because law firms are now frightened of Trump.
The left’s lawfare is turning America into the legal equivalent of a “Mad Max” wasteland, where the instigators of this brutal abuse of law are themselves prey to the forces they’ve unleashed.
Trump is right to pressure the law firms, and they should be quick to admit their mistakes rather than repeating them — either against Republicans in the future, or Democrats now.
As Washington Post columnist Jason Willick has argued, Congress should also step up, codifying into law the Justice Department’s guidelines against political prosecutions.
Federal legislation can stop state officials like Alvin Bragg from bringing cases using federal campaign-finances laws, which because of their intricacy are easily weaponized.
Yet the only sure and lasting remedy for lawfare is to beat it at the ballot box.
And thankfully we Americans, unlike the French, still get to have our say there.
Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review.
