Trump becomes first former U.S. president charged with a crime after grand jury indictment
The 2023 calendar could’ve been printed by Kafka & Co.—half campaign trail, half legal obstacle course with a media tent. Between March and August, Donald Trump managed four indictments—two federal, two state—turning the year into a looping montage of tarmacs, rallies, and courthouse selfies.
Who Screwed It Up
Georgia kicked things off with one heroic misclick. A clerk uploaded a draft indictment before the grand jury even voted—instant fuel for conspiracists, and a brand-new pastime for the defense: performative outrage.
Judge Cannon turned “expedited” into myth. Deadlines floated into the horizon, hearings shapeshifted into maybes, and every delay felt like divine intervention with better stationery.
Trump’s legal team perfected entropy as a service—motions in bulk, counsel on rotation, confusion deployed like camouflage. Somewhere between strategy and slapstick, chaos became the defense exhibit.
DOJ, not to be outdone, nailed the optics fumble of the year: two federal indictments dropped right after two state ones, crafting the illusion of coordination they couldn’t disprove without looking guilty of something else.
No shadow cabal necessary—just a spectacular run of unforced errors in tailored suits, all proving that history doesn’t need masterminds when it has paperwork.
Eye-Roll Meter: 4.5
Four indictments, ninety-one charges, and the campaign still met its shipping deadlines. Accountability may crawl, but the merch department never sleeps.
Damage Report
Trump’s indictments left behind a receipt the size of a budget deficit—legal fees, security overtime, and enough paperwork to fell a small forest. The May 2024 New York conviction made him the first president officially guilty of something other than hubris, a milestone nobody wanted but everyone saw coming. His PACs burned through roughly $65 million on lawyers, rerouting donor cash from campaign stages to subpoenas. Dockets jammed, security details ballooned, and taxpayers footed the bill for democracy’s most expensive civics lesson.
The political fallout was harder to itemize. Polls fossilized along party lines. “Weaponization” graduated from rally chant to draft legislation. Every arraignment became a telethon for outrage. The system didn’t collapse—it just sagged under the strain, a little slower, a lot pricier, and noticeably short of faith.
The rule of law technically survived, though these days it moves like someone still icing the bruise.
The Upside, Allegedly
For all the wreckage, the system did its ungainly job. A former president got charged, tried, and convicted—no tanks, no coups, just clerks, calendars, and twelve citizens who didn’t fake sick. The republic’s survival hinged on punctual jurors and functional printers, which is either inspiring or terrifying depending on your caffeine level.
Some corners of government even learned. Courts tightened their guardrails, retrained trigger-happy clerks, and discovered the radical concept of shared scheduling. Georgia’s RICO circus shrank from a 19-defendant disaster to a working courtroom. Even DOJ eventually synced its messaging enough to look less like an improv troupe.
The public, meanwhile, got the civics crash course nobody asked for. Millions can now explain “RICO” without Googling it first. Voters glimpsed the justice system as it really operates—clunky, procedural, occasionally upright.
It wasn’t graceful, but it worked. For a democracy perpetually auditioning for collapse, “still standing” qualifies as a win.