Why don’t Donald Trump’s supporters seem to care about the lawsuits against him? | Opinion

Why don’t Donald Trump’s supporters seem to care about the lawsuits against him? What does that tell us about them, our legal system and the coming presidential election?

On Friday, Feb. 16, New York State Judge Arthur Engoron ordered the former president and the Trump Organization to pay over $354 million in damages, and barred Trump “from serving as an officer or director of any New York corporation or other legal entity in New York for a period of three years.” In a 92-page opinion, the court found that he engaged in massive fraud, including that he “submitted blatantly false financial data.”

Last year, a jury found that Trump had sexually abused E. Jean Carroll and awarded her $5 million in damages. Last month, in a separate lawsuit, a jury in a New York federal court found that Trump had defamed Carroll and awarded an $83.3 million judgment against him.

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These are just the civil suits against Trump. There are four pending criminal prosecutions, with a total of 91 indictments against Trump.

In March, he will be tried in New York state court on 34 felony counts. In 2016, Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer, paid porn star Stormy Daniel $130,000 to remain silent about her affair with Trump. Allegedly, Trump then fraudulently disguised those payments as corporate legal expenses in violation of New York law.

Trump was supposed to be tried in March in federal court in Washington, D.C. on four counts of attempting to undermine the outcome of the November 2020 presidential election, but the trial has been postponed after the former president appealed — initially to the federal court of appeals, where he lost. Now, after the trial court refused to find Trump completely immune from criminal prosecution, it has been appealed to the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, there is a 13-count indictment against Trump in Georgia state court for attempting to undermine the presidential election in that state. A Georgia state trial judge held a hearing last week on whether to disqualify District Attorney Fani Willis on the grounds that she had an improper romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor in her office.

There is also a 40-count indictment pending against Trump in federal court in Florida for illegally possessing classified material and engaging in obstruction of justice in the investigation about it.

These lawsuits — some completed and some pending — show a person with blatant disregard of the law. No former president ever has been indicted, let alone 91 times.

But why doesn’t this seem to matter in the polls? If anything, the verdicts against Trump and the indictments seem to have helped him politically.

One possibility is that voters don’t believe that he committed these offenses and think that it’s all political persecution. That is, after all, what Trump constantly says. Yet that line of thinking ignores the evidence that has been produced in court: of his sexual abuse and defamation of Carroll, his false statements and his fraud.

It also ignores the evidence that seems so clear for his coming criminal cases: that there is no dispute that $130,000 in hush money was paid to Daniels; that he urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” him 11,780 votes; that he attempted to undermine the 2020 presidential election results; or that he admitted that he illegally possessed a large amount of classified information.

Another possibility is that a large number of voters don’t care. Perhaps they don’t regard the offenses as serious enough to justify voting against Trump. Some seem to view this as reflecting what they like about Trump: his willingness to flout norms and even the law. His aggressive contrarianism appeals to his supporters.

But this attitude is frightening. The core of the rule of law is that no one, not even the president, is above the law. If voters are willing to ignore Trump’s violations of the law, the message that sends about approving lawlessness is scary. If he wins the presidency, he surely would begin by believing that he need not follow the law and that his constituency will support him even when he blatantly violates it.

For decades, conservatives have identified themselves as the champions of “law and order.” It is ironic and perplexing that they could embrace a candidate who shows so little regard of the law.

Maybe it is simply that Trump’s supporters believe that he is seriously flawed, but better than Joe Biden. Why, then, did they not support an alternative in the Republican primaries?

We must remind ourselves that none of this is normal. Trump’s continual disregard for the law should be a decisive issue in the coming election. But will it be?

Erwin Chemerinsky is dean and professor of law at the UC Berkeley School of Law.