I have an op-ed up this afternoon at America’s Real Newspaper of Record, the New York Post, regarding the state of Georgia’s election-interference indictment against former president Donald Trump that is apparently imminent — see our Brittany Bernstein’s report on the snafu that led the Fulton County Court clerk’s office to prematurely post a docket entry describing the coming charges.

The headline on my Post piece suggests that the Georgia case could be “the most perilous threat to Trump.” I would have said potentially the most enduring.

What I mean by that is two things.

First, I’ve been critical of Biden Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s federal indictment of Trump for election interference — not because Smith fails to outline egregious conduct (the indictment overflows with it) but because there are no federal penal statutes that directly, tightly apply to the conduct alleged. As a result, Smith’s application of the federal legal concepts of fraud, obstruction, and civil rights is highly debatable. But because our federalist system makes the states primarily responsible for the conduct and policing of elections, Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis has an array of state laws that more directly target misconduct in connection with the electoral process. She may have an easier time proving that the same conduct was not only egregious but illegal.

Second, I argue as follows:

To be sure, Willis’s election case may not be as cut-and-dried as Smith’s Mar-a-Lago documents indictment. I still regard the latter as the most perilous case for Trump: It involves an easily provable retention of national-defense intelligence, and it occurred after the election so there are fewer constitutional ramifications. But Willis’s case may well be more straightforward — less legally problematic — than Smith’s election-interference case, and it will surely be more compelling than Bragg’s nakedly partisan business-records indictment.

What should most concern Trump is that the Georgia case could be the most enduring of all the criminal indictments. If Trump or another Republican were to win the 2024 election, the new president could issue a pardon or otherwise have his Justice Department drop Smith’s federal indictments against Trump. . . . Presidents, however, have no authority to pardon state crimes. It remains to be seen whether [Willis] can convince a jury of Atlantans to convict Trump. But even a newly elected President Trump could not make the Georgia prosecution go away. If he were convicted, it would stick.

The full column is here.