Donald Trump ran for president a second time to save America and to make her great again. Secondarily, though, he also ran to stay out of prison. And that’s where Jack Smith and Letitia James and Alvin Bragg and the rest of them come in.

As NBC News reports, “Justice Department officials have been evaluating how to wind down the two federal criminal cases against President-elect Donald Trump before he takes office to comply with long-standing department policy that a sitting president can’t be prosecuted, two people familiar with the matter tell NBC News.”

We can practically hear The Machine crying out in anguish, We gave you one job. One job! Or was that Merrick Garland crying out?

On Tuesday, Trump completed the most remarkable, most spectacular political comeback in American history. Two days later, he gets the news that his lawfare-driven federal persecutors are calling it quits.

Not a bad week, eh? And not a bad one-two punch to the Trump-hating Left, eh? Jack Smith had been bracing for retribution in the event of a Trump electoral victory, but that’s a misreading of Trump’s stated intent. “My retribution is going to be success,” the former and future president has repeatedly said.

“The American people have reelected President Trump with an overwhelming mandate to Make America Great Again,” said Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung. “It is now abundantly clear that Americans want an immediate end to the weaponization of our justice system, so we can, as President Trump said in his historic speech [very early Wednesday morning], unify our country and work together for the betterment of our nation.”

As to this weaponization, Cheung is likely only half right. Or maybe four-fifths right. Because there’s certainly an Ahabian desire on the lunatic Left to legally pursue Donald Trump to the ends of the earth, regardless of the merits.

As for the Left’s leading instrument of lawfare, Smith has had a rough go of it lately. Earlier this year, a federal court ruled, and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas confirmed, that he wasn’t lawfully appointed — that he was a private citizen, that he wasn’t approved by the Senate, and his selection and $36 million funding by Attorney General Merrick Garland was thus a violation of the Constitution’s Appointments Clause.

With the courts having continually ruled that a sitting president is off-limits for prosecution, Smith knows he’ll soon be out of a job. As constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley pointed out on Fox News yesterday, “He’s a lame duck prosecutor, and people are just waiting to see if he leaves on his own or gets shown the door. But either way, he’s gone.”

Turley, though, noted that if the federal government’s cases against Trump had hit a brick wall, the state-level cases were a different matter, and the Left’s lawfare campaign against Trump would likely shift to New York’s Trump-deranged Attorney General Letitia James and others. Wednesday, in a bizarrely smug and self-congratulatory press conference, James practically said as much, first congratulating Trump and then repeatedly vowing that she’d “fight back” against him and his incoming administration.

“We did not expect this result,” James melodramatically intoned, “but we are prepared to respond to this result. And my office has been preparing for several months because we’ve been here before. We faced this challenge before, and we used the rule of law to fight back. And we are prepared to fight back once again because, as the attorney general of this great state, it is my job to protect and defend the rights of New Yorkers and the rule of law. And I will not shrink from that responsibility.”

New York AG Letitia James says of Trump returning to office: “We are prepared to fight back once again.” More: https://t.co/6xzB7x4wtW pic.twitter.com/iouI5JgWEK

— NewsNation (@NewsNation) November 6, 2024

So, despite the collapse of the federal cases, Trump’s hyper-partisan pursuers are still alive and ill at the state level. As Turley noted:

People were looking at New York as exactly why they needed a new direction. And she is the face of lawfare. She ran on the pledge to nail Trump for something, anything. She didn’t even mention what it would be, and she ran on that platform. And so it leaves many of us a bit cold to hear this self-congratulatory speech of hers, that she’s well-prepared for what’s coming. … With both the houses under control of the Republicans, any lawfare is going to shift to these DAs. That’s going to have to be the center of gravity for people who want to continue lawfare. And, look, lawfare is a form of rage … and rage is addictive. And people a not going to break that addiction. They’re just going to shift it to people like James, who’s always been willing to use it.

Turley’s point about rage being addictive is an excellent one, and it helps explain the Left’s relentless lawfare campaign against Trump. This approach, though — the criminalization of our political differences — is ruinous to the fabric of our nation.

Perhaps the only way those on the Left can be broken of this addiction would be for the lawfare tables to be turned on them. Perhaps, for example, if a Republican-controlled Securities and Exchange Commission were to take a look at Nancy Pelosi’s remarkable ability to pick stock-market winners, or if some Republican attorneys general were to examine any number of Democrat lawmakers’ lucrative business dealings within their states, perhaps then these people would begin to get the message.

Lawfare can be used against anyone. Even Democrats.