Responding to news that the special counsel Jack Smith had dropped all charges against Donald Trump for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election and retention of classified information, Dan Goldman, a prosecutor turned New York Democrat and member of the House oversight committee, lamented “a shame for justice in this country”.
Related: Prosecutors drop election interference and documents cases against Trump
“It establishes that Donald Trump is above the law,” Goldman told CNN. “The supreme court put him above the law [by ruling that he had ‘absolute immunity’ for official acts] but now he appears to escape full accountability for what were crimes charged by a grand jury.”
Goldman rejected the argument that by re-electing Trump, the American people had acquitted him of all charges.
“I think what was very clear is that people voted for Donald Trump because they thought that he was going to improve the lives of the middle class, and perhaps in addition that he would secure the border,” Goldman said. “They did not vote for him to dismantle our democracy, to attack the constitution, to politicize all of our agencies, and certainly not as a referendum on his criminal cases.
“Those cases should have been played out in a court of law … and Donald Trump should not have been able to run out the clock.”
Elsewhere, Aquilino Gonell, a former Capitol police sergeant who testified memorably about his experiences and injuries on 6 January 2021, when Trump sent a mob to attack Congress, lamented a simple “miscarriage of justice”.
“‘No one is above the law’ is a great slogan,” added Gonell, who suffered injuries to his hands, shoulder, calf and foot, as well as psychological trauma, in the Capitol attack.
To many Americans on Monday, “no one is above the law”, however, no longer seemed like a legal reality. Three weeks after Trump defeated Kamala Harris, Smith dropped 44 charges against him: four for election subversion and 40 for retention of classified records.
Smith said he was following Department of Justice policy, which says a sitting president cannot be charged. He also said he was acting “without prejudice”, which meant the cases could be refiled after Trump leaves power.
That was an echo of the situation in New York, where sentencing on Trump’s 34 felony convictions related to hush money payments to a porn star has been postponed. In Georgia, eight election subversion charges remain on the docket.
Nonetheless, among Trump’s opponents, the mood was one of despond. The writer Tom Nichols, a conservative Trump critic, summed up: “Mission accomplished. He ran for [president] to stay out of jail, and here we are.”
Steven Cheung, Trump’s spokesperson, celebrated “a major victory for the rule of law”, adding: “The American people and President Trump want an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and we look forward to uniting our country.”
Democrats, however, expect Trump to seek revenge, not unity – and immediate comments from both the president-elect and JD Vance, the Ohio senator and incoming vice-president, did little to calm such fears.
Vance said: “If Donald J Trump had lost an election, he may very well have spent the rest of his life in prison. These prosecutions were always political. Now it’s time to ensure what happened to President Trump never happens in this country again.”
In a post to his own social media platform, Trump said all cases against him, including civil suits in New York resulting in multimillion-dollar penalties, were “empty and lawless”, orchestrated by his Democratic foes.
“It was a political hijacking,” Trump said, “and a low point in the history of our country that such a thing could have happened, and yet, I persevered, against all odds, and WON.”
