RICH LOWRY: Donald Trump should swear off lawfare

Jack Smith is on his way out, and we don’t need another one.

While serving in Joe Biden’s Justice Department, the special counsel concocted a novel legal case against the president’s foremost political opponent and would have been happy to try Donald Trump in the midst of the presidential election campaign. This was an outrageous abuse of the legal system, and it was just one of the acts of lawfare against Trump and people around him in recent years.

Now, with the Republican about to enter the White House again and Smith packing up, the question is whether Trump will engage in a campaign of counter-lawfare.

Let’s put aside the hypocrisy here. The same people who supported, or didn’t object to, the extended campaign of legal harassment against Trump are convinced that it would threaten the very existence of our system of government if Trump used the same tools against his enemies.

It’s true, nonetheless, that the most foreseeable early pitfall for the Trump presidency would be an effort to go after his adversaries. Trump blows hot and cold on whether he’s so inclined. He’ll say that success is the best retribution, as he did on “Meet the Press” recently, then also say the members of the Jan. 6 committee should go to jail.

On Truth Social the other day, Trump posted a rant by ally Steve Bannon about how members of the Jan. 6 committee, prosecutors and judges should know that “we’re coming for you.” On a podcast hosted by Bannon, Trump’s nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, talked last year of pursuing members of the media “who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” although he later downplayed the remark.

Unless one of Trump’s opponents has engaged in some real, no-doubt crime, any attempted prosecution along these lines would be a very bad idea: It would become an all-consuming political story, it wouldn’t be popular and it would fail as a legal matter.

A new campaign of lawfare would also be terrible for the country. Using the legal system for political ends erodes faith in it and unnecessarily inflames passions. Besides, any abuse of the powers of the Justice Department is, ipso facto, wrong.

An argument MAGA enthusiasts sometimes make is that “they won’t stop doing it to us until we do it to them,” or, in other words, political prosecutions can have a deterrent effect. It’s just as likely, though, that another round of lawfare will make partisan justice an entrenched part of our landscape. The mission should be to save the DOJ from its misuse, not to repurpose it for a series of new abuses for different partisan ends.

Trump is right when he touts success as the best form of vengeance. Whereas a lesser politician would have been ground down by all the investigations, indictments and trials, Trump used them to lend fuel to his primary candidacy and to become even more of a legend by defying his pursuers. He ended up defeating the cases against him legally and politically. That, alone, is a significant achievement, and a powerful rebuke to those who weaponized the justice system.

Now, Trump has the opportunity to deliver popular results that will make him stronger and his enemies weaker. The axiom for Trump and his team should be “defeat them, don’t become them.” Trump did the former and would be well served to avoid the latter.

Rich Lowry is on X @RichLowry.