(Dobbs) States' Rights Might Pay Off
Donald Trump has less influence in Georgia than he might in Washington DC.
States’ rights, defined by the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, are a foundation of our federal system. They also are a cornerstone for the autonomy of the 50 sovereign states.
That’s what’s so rich about the newest indictments against Donald Trump. They don’t come out of Washington, where he could claim a “deep state” conspiracy and where, in the worst case scenario, he could conceivably sit again as president and literally wipe any convictions from the books. They come out of Georgia and that means three things. First, as many commentators already have pointed out, Trump could not pardon himself if he gets convicted (and in fact would have to serve at least five years behind bars if so sentenced before the state Pardons Board could even set him free). Second, he could not fire the prosecutor who won the conviction. And third, while there is a prohibition against televising trials in federal courts, there is none in Georgia. If Donald Trump is to be held accountable, it could happen in the grating glare of television lights. It all is a matter for the state to adjudicate and control, not the federal government. It is an affirmative application of states’ rights.
This is not how the far-right wants it.
They want to treat the 10th Amendment as a one-way street. What it says is, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The 10th Amendment helps explain why laws about everything from marijuana to the death penalty, from same sex marriage to gun control, can take different form from state to state.
And now, since the MAGA movement took over the once proud Republican party, the idea of states’ rights has been used to drain power out of Washington. They have become almost a straw man for all kinds of right-wing laws, thanks in part to a Supreme Court that they unethically packed (with unconscionable exploitations of the system by Mitch McConnell). Since then, the party of Trump has had its way more often than not on issues like guns, abortions, voting rights, civil rights, even human rights.
But now, states’ rights might be coming back to bite them.
That’s because Georgia’s laws on racketeering, the state’s laws on racketeering— a.k.a. RICO laws— are almost tailor-made for what Trump and his cronies are accused of doing. RICO stands for “Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations” and that’s what the indictments imply. By working together, they charge, Trump’s team was “a criminal enterprise,” conspiring "to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump.”
It’s the same law that on a federal level put gangsters like “Teflon John Gotti” and “Sammy the Bull” behind bars.
Of course for millions of Americans, if history is any guide, it’s nothing more than a witch hunt. Dan Rather writes, “Tens of millions of Americans greet the indictment news with outrage, but not because of the seriousness of the charges or the larger story of a violent attempted coup. They rally around the man enmeshed in an unprecedented web of legal peril. They exalt him. He is their hero and their party’s likely standard-bearer for the next presidential election. They will grasp at the faintest tendril of a conspiracy theory to justify their idolatry.”
Well, those of us who don’t trust Trump have a different take on the conspiracy at issue: it’s the conspiracy asserted in Georgia’s indictment, a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election and rob Georgia’s citizens of their rightful vote.
Of course it’s not just Georgians who have that right. It’s the right of every American citizen in every American state. But it’s Georgia that’s leveling the charges that Trump conspired to violate every citizen’s right to have their votes count, their right not to have them manipulated, their right to elect the leaders they want.
This is states’ rights at its best. And it pairs up with the two sets of federal indictments where Trump and some of his allies also have been charged— for purloining and concealing top secret documents and for inspiring the insurrection— two cases where conspiracies also are alleged.
There is no guarantee that Donald Trump will be found guilty of any of the stupefying 91 felony counts he now faces. But with so many trials now looming over the once and now wannabe future president, the odds are that some will stick. If they’re the ones in Georgia, the odds are that he will be powerless to stay free.
Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 37-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.
A very timely and uplifting reminder. Thanks Greg.