Editorial: Donald Trump and Jussie Smollett have much in common. Both merit attention from prosecutors.

We don’t doubt for a second that there is a political motivation behind Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation, and much-anticipated potential indictment, of former President Donald Trump.

Democrats can insist otherwise all they like. Republicans may scream that any pending indictment, which at press time had yet to be announced, merely is naked partisanship. Whatever. It’s all just noise.

In reality, anyone who thinks prosecutors operate in some kind of purist vacuum, free from real-world influence and considerations, is merely naive. There are many prosecutions, and non-prosecutions, that are at least to some degree political.

But in this instance? We don’t care. And neither should you.

Let’s review the tawdry facts. A grand jury has been exploring for the past several weeks Trump’s alleged 2016 payment of $130,000 in hush money to porn entertainer Stormy Daniels, allegedly to persuade her not to go public with the details of a prior sexual encounter with Trump. The former president has denied both the affair and any wrongdoing, fiscal or otherwise.

Trump’s lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen has said that he paid Daniels, otherwise known as Stephanie Clifford, through some kind of shell company. He then was reimbursed by Trump, he claims. Allegedly, the Trump Organization then logged the reimbursements as legal expenses.

The story does not end with Daniels. Earlier in 2016, the grand jury reportedly has heard, Cohen also arranged for a former Playboy model named Karen McDougal to be paid $150,000 by the publisher of the notorious supermarket tabloid the National Enquirer, which then shelved a presumably similar story that McDougal had wanted to sell.

And, Trump allegedly also increased Cohen’s reimbursement to cover taxes, writing a check to Cohen for $420,000. All allegedly billed as legal expenses at the Trump Organization.

Cohen has pleaded guilty to violating federal campaign finance law in connection with the payments But Cohen, obviously, is not the big fish here nor the principal in this alleged transaction. That would be Trump, whom if indicted, would be the first former president to be prosecuted for a crime. Let that sink in.

Yet Republicans have been howling all week that all Bragg has is a minor misdemeanor case, at best, and that in the normal run of legal business, he declines to prosecute, or cuts deals on, far more egregious examples of felonious conduct. If the alleged perp was not named Trump, this argument goes, none of this would be happening.

Sure. No doubt. But this argument misses an important point.

In a weird way, there are similarities with the Jussie Smollett case. Although the case is on appeal, the clout-heavy actor was found guilty in 2021 of staging, with fixers and great creativity, a fake racially motivated attack on this city’s streets designed to illicit sympathy and promote his own career.

In this instance, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx initially declined to prosecute Smollett, quietly dropping the charges in 2019 after he agreed to perform a few hours of community service and left behind his $10,000 bond, although she did not require him to admit guilt. When the prosecution proceeded over her head, Foxx made a strikingly similar argument to the one Republicans now are making about Trump.

“Smollett was indicted, tried and convicted by a kangaroo prosecution in a matter of months,” she wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times. “Meanwhile, the families of more than 50 Black women murdered in Chicago over the last 20 years await justice.”

Republicans derided that argument and were right to do so. The Smollett case had nothing to do with those killings, and Foxx shouldn’t have made that comparison.

Sure, tough decisions have to be made as to where to put prosecutorial resources. But Foxx failed to see that the Smollett case had privilege at its core, and also huge symbolic importance. By faking racism, the actor managed to insult all Chicagoans, both those who take pride in their decent behavior and all those who’ve suffered through real racist attacks.

Foxx’s actions, which she surely regrets, poisoned her relationship with the police, which had wasted resources on the case by taking Smollett seriously. The cops could not decline to investigate, and they resented the heck out of Foxx’s office. That’s still an issue.

In the case of Trump, the hypocritical partisans have flipped. Too many Republicans now are saying “no big deal,” just as too many left-leaning figures backed Foxx’s decision to let Smollett off the hook. If Smollett came with symbolic value, Trump eclipses that exponentially.

Take, for example, his shameful attempt to get ahead of the story and call to his supporters to “protest” his presumptive indictment. This is an act of stunning selfishness, potentially putting his supporters at legal and employment risk. He did the same on Jan. 6, when he ginned up a mob to trample all over Capitol Hill, many of whom thought they was doing so under perverse permission from the president.

How do Republicans not see the clear and present danger? Most likely, they do and this is yet another example of political figures trying to thread the needle between maintaining some distance from Trump and yet not offending his potent base.

For an example of this tortured place in which they find themselves, you need only read Ron DeSantis’ remarks this week. There was a lot of rhetorical squirming. Too much.

Here is what the Florida governor and potential presidential candidate should have said: “I have nothing to say other than to note that I know that investigations and grand jury inquiries are ready when they are ready, that those who seek higher office generally are better avoiding making hush-money payments to sex workers, and that the Manhattan district attorney must now be allowed to do his job.”

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