Several years ago, I was the sponsor for a guy going through conversion from what he was (in a religious sense) to Catholic. He wasn’t just any guy; he was a very senior CIA officer who has frequently appeared on television since he transitioned to think-tank denizen. The Rite of Christian Initiation as an Adult (RCIA) experience builds a bond between sponsor and candidate/catechumen that often goes beyond religious conversations. On one occasion, we talked politics and foreign policy.

What separates us from the Third World in our politics, he opined, are the twin concepts of peaceful transfer of power via the ballot box rather than by military intervention and the unwritten and unspoken principle that victors do not use the police power of the state to punish the vanquished. Without the second concept, no sane person will ever relinquish office if they run the risk of ending up imprisoned or on the gallows. Once politics become a blood sport, he said, there is no way to stop the slide into rule by people with guns. I’d never really looked at it that way and can’t, even today, disagree with him. If there is any debt owed to Gerald Ford, it is his preservation of the republic by pardoning Richard Nixon.

With that said, it seems as though the left, which has long detested America, is hellbent on crossing that redline and pushing this nation ever closer to one where the abuse of law and the use of the judicial apparatus as stormtroopers and enforcers rather than the rule of law and respect for tradition prevails. If Politico is to be believed, stay with me here, the left is anticipating that President Trump will soon be indicted on state felony charges in New York: POLITICO Playbook: How Palm Beach is preparing for a possible Trump indictment:

SCOOP: PALM BEACH MAKES CONTINGENCY PLANS IN CASE TRUMP IS INDICTED — Law enforcement officials in Palm Beach County, Fla., have actively prepared for the possibility that Manhattan District Attorney CY VANCE could indict former President DONALD TRUMP while he’s at Mar-a-Lago, according to two high-ranking county officials involved in planning sessions.

Among the topics discussed in those meetings: how to handle the thorny extradition issues that could arise if an indictment moves forward.

An obscure clause in Florida’s statute on interstate extradition gives Gov. RON DESANTIS the ability to intervene and even investigate whether an indicted “person ought to be surrendered” to law enforcement officials from another state — which means that as Mar-a-Lago prepares to close down for the season and Trump relocates to Bedminster, N.J., it isn’t just the Florida heat he’s leaving behind: He could lose a key piece of political protection.

“The statute leaves room for interpretation that the governor has the power to order a review and potentially not comply with the extradition notice,” says JOE ABRUZZO, clerk of the Circuit Court of Palm Beach County, the official who would be in charge of opening a potential fugitive-at-large case.

One wrinkle to Abruzzo’s potential role in all of this: He is a former close associate of President JOE BIDEN’S younger brother, FRANK. Abruzzo tells Playbook that despite his friendship with the Biden family, “the full extent of the law will be followed and carried out appropriately, without bias.”

If an indictment comes down while Trump is in Bedminster for the summer, this could all play out very differently. New Jersey’s extradition statute is similar to Florida’s, giving the governor the power to investigate an out-of-state warrant. But its governor is Democrat PHIL MURPHY, who is no fan of Trump’s, and would not likely intervene to stop Trump’s extradition. In the event of an indictment, Trump’s lawyers could also negotiate a condition of surrender, which could cut local law enforcement out. An attorney for Trump declined to comment.

With Trump settling down in New Jersey for the next few months, Florida is unlikely to have to sort through this any time soon. But the clock is ticking on the Manhattan D.A.’s investigation: On March 12, Vance said in a statement that he will retire at the end of 2021, and speculation abounds that his office — which is currently investigating whether Trump and his businesses committed banking and tax fraud, among other lines of inquiry — could issue indictments before passing the case along to his successor.

And that means that Palm Beach County may yet have to get involved — depending on whether Trump is indicted, of course, and whether that happens after Mar-a-Lago reopens in the fall.

The left has been demanding that President Trump and his family be indicted for imaginary crimes ever since he won a free and fair election in 2016, so it is no surprise that this story is rising to the surface again. President Trump’s impact on the Republican Party is much greater than anyone in the media had thought possible. He’s emerging as a significant power center in the 2022 and 2024 campaigns. The people who had roped their wagon onto the NeverTrump star, like Liz Cheney, like the Bulwark twits, like the North American Man-Boy Lincoln Association, are being pushed aside. The institutional forces that had long been associated with the GOP, like the US Chamber of Commerce, are also finding themselves left out in the cold by the up-and-coming generation of populist politicians and a base that wants nothing to do with Heritage Foundation style corporatist conservatism.

We need to anticipate that President Trump will, indeed, be indicted by a New York grand jury. The New York attorney general and the Manhattan district attorney have too much political capital involved in their highly public investigation of President Trump to shrug and say, “nothing there, folks.” With the New York power structure in utter chaos thanks to Andrew Cuomo’s predatory behavior, casual cruelty, calculated evasion of the law, and superhuman hubris, there is literally no mechanism left within that state to prevent a revenge indictment that could very well propel the instigator to national prominence. They will give no thought to the long-term damage done to our political life or even the damage done to the Democrat party in 2022 and 2024. The lizard-brain urge to lash out at President Trump is simply too strong to be resisted.

The rest of the Politico piece is just Resistance spank material. There won’t be any kind of a face-off between Ron DeSantis and Cyrus Vance over the corpus of Donald Trump. If he’s indicted, he will end up on trial. He will be convicted. He will spend the rest of his life in jail. The left will think they have taught us a lesson, and they will be right. The next Republican president will be under enormous pressure to take a similar Democrat scalp. To be on the safe side and make it hurt, he’ll probably have to take down several prominent Democrats. And the left will ‘wave the bloody shirt’ and demand retribution the next time they occupy the White House. The real question becomes why a Republican from a Blue or even a Purple state would even bother to run for the presidency and what he would do when leaving office meant either prison or financial ruin in defending himself?