Manhattan hush money - conviction upheld, sentencing completed, appealing. Classified documents - dismissed, report permanently blocked. January 6 federal case - dismissed. Georgia RICO case - barely any updates, might as well be dead. That's one prosecution that stuck and three that evaporated.

People debate whether this proves the system is unfairly targeting Trump or whether it proves the system is protecting him - and honestly, I think you can construct a reasonable argument either way depending on which cases you emphasize.

The classified documents case seemed significant. Special Counsel Jack Smith was investigating whether Trump deliberately hoarded national defense information at Mar-a-Lago. That had documentary evidence, testimony, FBI searches. Then it just got dismissed, and when Jack Smith tried to release his investigative report so the public could at least understand what he found, a judge blocked it permanently. We'll never know what that investigation concluded.

Then there's the Georgia case - the RICO charges, the attempts to overturn an election through the secretary of state, the recorded phone call. That case had specificity and state-level oversight. No recent updates means it's probably dead, especially now that Trump's back in office and can make appointments.

So either the Justice Department and state prosecutors brought four weak cases (unlikely, given their institutional credibility), or the legal system found ways to dispose of three of them. Which interpretation feels right to you - and what does it tell us about whether serious criminal charges against a president can actually survive?