[M]ost Republicans whining about Bragg today would be whining just as much if Trump had been convicted in one of the other three cases pending against him. And those cases are considerably stronger on the evidence and significantly graver with respect to the crimes they allege: One has to do with Trump’s chicanery in trying to overturn the election, another has to do with his election tampering in Georgia, and the third has to do with him obstructing the Justice Department’s effort to recover classified material stashed at Mar-a-Lago.

All of those speak directly to his fitness as president. Someone who cares earnestly about norms and good governance should want him to answer those charges. His supporters emphatically do not, needless to say.

Even conservatives who should know better, like John Yoo, aren’t above trying to delegitimize the other three cases by lumping them together with Bragg’s much weaker indictment. “In bringing a series of deeply flawed cases against Trump,” Yoo wrote, “both federal and local prosecutors have … targeted an unpopular figure first and looked for the crime second.”

Pure nonsense. The truth is literally the opposite: Trump’s coup plot was so egregious, and his concealment of classified documents so brazen, that he all but dared law enforcement to hold him accountable for either. No one had to “look” for the crimes; he committed them in plain sight, seemingly believing that his political stature would shield him from accountability.

Nick Cattogio