Newsletter: The fundamental questions at the heart of the Trump indictments

Good morning. I’m Paul Thornton, and it is Saturday, Aug. 19, 2023. Hurricane Hilary, or what’s left of it, is projected to arrive in Southern California tomorrow; click here to follow updates from the National Hurricane Center. Let’s look back at the week in Opinion.

In the din of commentary on former President Trump’s fourth indictment — the latest being this week in Fulton County, Ga. — it’s easy for some basic questions to be drowned out. To wit: Is there probable cause to charge Trump with a crime, or in his case 91 counts over four indictments? And do the prosecutors bringing charges have enough evidence to convict him?

Having read most of the indictments, I’d say the answer to the first question is a resounding yes. As for the second one, juries will ultimately answer that, but having watched Trump’s very public behavior over the time period covered by the indictments, one can confidently guess that the U.S. Department of Justice special counsel and the district attorneys in New York and Georgia feel pretty confident.

These are the standards that would apply to anyone; whether it’s proper to charge a former president who’s running for office again is a purely political consideration, not a legal one. Giving too much weight to politics in the face of overwhelming evidence of Trump’s criminal conduct is another way of arguing that the law shouldn’t apply to him as it would anyone else.

Where mileage may vary on holding Trump accountable is whether to apply the 14th Amendment’s prohibition on any officeholder who previously “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from serving as president. Even conservative legal scholars have said this language should disqualify Trump from running in 2024, and the good-government group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) promises to challenge the ex-president’s 2024 candidacy. In her op-ed column exploring these arguments, Jackie Calmes notes the difficulty in finding a way to enforce the 14th Amendment, but says that shouldn’t deter defenders of the Constitution:

“CREW also hasn’t made clear exactly how Trump’s disqualification can be enforced. The organization’s spokesman would only tell me: ‘We are working on a legal challenge now that we’ll file at the appropriate time.’

“Let the Constitution’s protectors loose. Bring on the battle. Yes, this is uncharted ground but so too is the place we find ourselves: with an ex-president, the first to reject the voters’ will and the peaceful transfer of power, now seeking a return to the highest office.

“The courts can settle the matter — though I shudder at the thought that the Supreme Court could be the ultimate decider. After all, 23 years ago, a much less conservative court than today’s put George W. Bush in the White House.”

The Georgia indictment of Donald Trump is different from the others. Writes former U.S. Atty. Harry Litman: “One of the most important differences between the Fulton County indictment and the federal case is its inclusion of 18 defendants in addition to Trump. These alleged criminals run the gamut from what Mike Pence called the ‘gaggle of crackpot lawyers’ who surrounded and abetted Trump ... to lesser-known Georgia players who took part in more provincial aspects of the plot.”

The $1-million home is becoming the norm in L.A. This is an outrage we could have prevented. Last year I wrote about my childhood home — a cramped, off-white bungalow in a decent part of Glendale — being valued at $1.4 million today. This is a house my great-grandparents bought as fresh immigrants from Norway for $8,500 in 1954. Now, the median price of a home in L.A. County is about to hit $1 million; UC Berkeley researcher Stephen Menendian explores how our zoning rules saddled us with this wildly unaffordable housing.

The police raid on Kansas newspaper was possibly illegal — and definitely troubling. The Marion County Record, a small newspaper with a circulation of about 4,000, and the home of the paper’s publisher were raiding by police acting on a search warrant last week. The Times’ editorial board finds the police department’s justification of the raid unconvincing and warns of the “temptation of law enforcement to overreach in dealing with journalists ... in communities of all sizes.”

For more than 80 years, Oregon was one of two states that allowed non-unanimous jury convictions. The U.S. Supreme Court outlawed such split-jury convictions in 2020, but hundreds of people in Oregon sent to prison under the unconstitutional practice remained incarcerated after the decision. This L.A. Times short documentary follows Tacuma Jackson after he was granted clemency by the Oregon governor but officially remained a felon convicted by a split jury more than 20 years ago.

A GenZer from Imperial Valley refuses to let the Supreme Court take away his future. Axel Abrica, 20, says recent Supreme Court rulings on affirmative action and abortion rights are wakeup calls for Generation Z. One way to fight back, he says, is to build social movements with social media. He wrote about his concerns in a letter to the editor and shared more about his life as part of our “Hear Me Out” video series.

More from this week in opinion

From our columnists

• Jonah Goldberg: How small donors have become a destructive, dividing force in American politics
• Jean Guerrero: Have fun with strangers. Democracy and our mental health may depend on it
• LZ Granderson: How hip-hop helped me through grief

From the Op-Ed desk

• We survived the Paradise fire. For Lahaina survivors, escape from hell will mark them forever
• Hollywood strikes prove Netflix and other streamers have grown too powerful. Time to break them up
• This idea could save California billions of gallons of water while generating clean energy

From the Times editorial board

• Leasing permanent housing for homeless people is faster than building it
• Stop minor traffic stops. They are an excuse to randomly search cars — and can turn deadly
• Five takeaways from the first year of America’s biggest climate law

Letters to the editor

• Maui fires are a warning to California: Expand urban solar now
• Why can’t I be paid “residuals” for work done years ago?
• I taught in Murrieta schools before transphobia took hold. What the hell happened?