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Oh, absolutely. I'm sort of a law anarchist at this point--the text of the law matters very little. Judges and lawyers have proved over and over again their willingness to creatively interpret laws to get whatever outcome they want, without consequences. Why should honest judges voluntarily limit themselves and abide by rules which other judges routinely ignore?
Trump legitimately did commit those crimes as far as I can tell. If he didn't, New York certainly has the power to write new laws which he is guilty of. To what extent must Trump abide by the legitimate rule of law of one state?
So far as I know, there is no law which prevents any state from writing a law intended to jail a presidential candidate. However, everyone recognizes this would be a terrible thing to do, so doubtless the supreme court would step in and fabricate some legal reasoning interpreting such a law as unconstitutional. It's harder to do so when, as in this case, the state does have a pretty good legal pretext to justify its legal decisions, and it's not extremely clear to everyone that the law was meant specifically to target one person.
We ceased to be a country of law a long time ago.
Legislative lawfare is prohibited (or at least made difficult) by Article I, Section 9, Clause 3 of the US Constitution: “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.”
Very easy to circumvent. Just pass a very broad law and only prosecute political enemies (perhaps along with a host of other undesirables).
Which, again, I'm sure would be ruled unconstitutional somehow, but not in any principled way.
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