A D.C. grand jury has refused to vote for an indictment of Cassidy Hutchinson, the one-time first-term Trump aide who became a star witness for the House January 6th subcommittee that investigated the attack. Obviously it’s good that illegitimate attempt failed since Hutchinson is guilty of nothing more than acting honorably. It’s embarrassing for the administration since it’s hard to fail at the grand jury level where the government is literally in charge of everything. But there’s something deeper and more important here: the un-strategic, increasingly impulsive and ultimately self-defeating nature of the Trump legal retribution campaign.
It’s true that the White House squeezes money and well-being from the targets of its campaign even when it doesn’t secure convictions. But when the failures are so consistent and so abject they have the effect of advertising both the president’s abuses of power and his weakness. Successfully abusing your power is a display of dominance which spreads fear. These clumsy and grasping failures more so generate anger and contempt. A shrewder would-be autocrat wouldn’t have made himself so deeply unpopular, in such foreseeable ways while he was trying to impose an Orban-style autocracy. Even at this late date, one with any foresight or self-control would drop these antics and focus other kinds of wrongdoing. But Trump simply can’t. We don’t diminish the gravity of Trump’s wrongdoing by noting that he is failing in this effort.
