About that indictment

I wasn't impressed with the sub-heading above a commentary piece in the New York Times (gift link):  

For more than two centuries, American presidents were effectively shielded from indictment. But the case against former President Donald J. Trump breaks that taboo and sets a new precedent.

That sounds like setting the ground for a two sides-ing "this is potentially too disruptive of our political system to bother doing it".

But now that I read the article itself, I guess it's not that bad.   It makes the pro-prosecution for crimes side pretty clear:  

While the indictment of Mr. Trump takes the country into uncharted waters, the authors of the Constitution might have been surprised only that it took so long. Justice Department policy maintains that sitting presidents cannot be indicted, but the framers explicitly contemplated the prospect of them being charged after leaving office.

A president impeached by the House and convicted and removed from office by the Senate “shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law,” Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution declares.

“Generally, we consider that language to suggest that, whatever may happen with respect to an impeachment while a president is in office, he still may be held liable civilly or criminally after he leaves office for his misconduct in office,” said Michael J. Gerhardt, a constitutional law professor at the University of North Carolina.

In other words, no former president was immune from criminal liability. “The framers would have been horrified at the possibility of a president ever being above the law while in office or after leaving it,” Mr. Gerhardt said.

Indeed, while voting to acquit Mr. Trump at his second impeachment trial — the one charging him with inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader from Kentucky, said he did so because Mr. Trump was no longer in office but added that he was still subject to criminal prosecution.

“My view is that so long as the case that is brought is for a crime that is not unusual to charge, and the proof is also as strong as one would normally have — i.e. that one wards against the problem of selective prosecution — then it is imperative that we hold politicians to account regardless of what position they hold or held,” said Andrew Weissmann, a deputy to Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel who investigated the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

Meena Bose, who is the executive dean of Hofstra University’s Peter S. Kalikow School of Government and runs a presidential history project, said that a country plagued by polarization and concerns about democracy would be stronger by enforcing responsibility on its leaders. “An active and continuing commitment to making sure all public officials follow the rule of law is essential to addressing those challenges,” she said.

The Trump lackeys on the other side say stuff like this:

In 2008, voters in two small towns in liberal Vermont approved resolutions accusing Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney of “crimes against the Constitution” and instructing their town attorneys to draft indictments. Nothing ever came of it, but it is not hard to imagine a conservative local prosecutor trying to charge President Biden with, say, failing to adequately guard the border.

“This presents the opportunity for potentially thousands of state and local prosecutors to investigate and charge a president without the impediment imposed by D.O.J.’s policy against indicting sitting presidents,” said Stanley M. Brand, a former House counsel whose firm represents a couple of Trump associates in the investigation into the mishandling of classified documents. “It theoretically subjugates the presidency in a way I don’t believe was ever constitutionally contemplated.”

Mr. Goldsmith said any prosecution could tear at the fabric of the system. “Especially if this indictment is followed by even a justified indictment from the special counsel, we will see recriminations and retributions in the medium term, all to the detriment of our political national health,” he said.

And a bit more blather follows, but the article then points out how, in many other long established democracies, former leaders are not given a permanent "get out of jail free" card just by virtue of having been President.

For what it's worth, I also do not give any great credence to the "it will only make him stronger!" line of argument.   It won't.