Griffin was convicted in March for trespassing at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as part of a mob attempting to stop Congress from confirming the Electoral College result of the 2020 presidential election.

The ruling appears to confirm that Donald Trump, if convicted of a crime in connection with the Capitol insurrection, also could be denied the right to hold office. And that would no doubt suit Trump’s Democratic foes — and his Republican one as well — since the disgraced former president has made no secret of his desire to return to the Oval Office in 2024.

Meanwhile, other potential crimes have come to light that arguably put Trump in more legal jeopardy. In August, the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida country club, in order to retrieve documents that are the property of the U.S. government.

Many of the documents in question pertain to sensitive matters of national security, and some are highly classified. Trump has claimed that he declassified all the documents in his possession, an unconvincing argument that is in any case irrelevant since the Justice Department has signaled he is liable under the Espionage Act, which criminalizes the mishandling of national security information irrespective of classification status. Some legal observers have pointed out that Trump has exposed himself to charges of obstruction of justice as well.

In all this trouble, Trump has enlisted his faithful mouthpieces in the Republican Party and the conservative media to downplay and obfuscate the nature of his actions — namely, that he absconded with highly sensitive documents with direct bearing on national and global security, and stored them in a country club where they would have been vulnerable to foreign spy agencies.

Trump and his enablers in the Republican Party are now clearly imperiling U.S. national security — and to an extent that is difficult to estimate, as there are some 90 empty folders with “classified” banners among the seized materials, according to the Justice Department.

The government is, of course, very anxious to locate the documents missing from those folders. Unfortunately, it faces a roadblock in Trump’s request to a court for a special master to review the seized documents. Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, signaled her willingness to grant his wishes in a decision that was widely criticized by legal experts.

And so the MAGA drama drags on, as Trump and his captive Republicans continue to do incalculable damage to our cherished political norms and institutions, all in service of saving him from the consequences of his misdeeds in office.

President Joe Biden, who has scrupulously avoided any involvement in the Justice Department’s or Congress’ investigations of Trump, has nonetheless been moved to warn the nation of the active threat Trump and his MAGA followers continue to pose to our democracy. In a speech earlier this month in Philadelphia, Biden denounced Trump and his followers for denying election results and threatening political violence.

Trump has left little doubt that he is embarked on a return bid for power in 2024. Biden has vowed — his own good health permitting — to defeat him again and warned of the GOP’s concerted effort to undermine voting rights. He called the upcoming midterm elections a “battle for the soul of this nation.”

In 2020, a big part of Biden’s appeal to voters was that he was not Donald Trump. At this writing, it only can only be noted that Joe Biden has built an impressive record in office that offers more than that simple proposition.

Be that as it may, if Trump can escape his legal challenges and remain a free man, he is the likeliest GOP candidate for president in 2024. Which means the next presidential election will be a replay of the referendum on Trump’s character that he lost decisively two years ago.

Jules Witcover’s latest book is “The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power,” published by Smithsonian Books. You can respond to this column at juleswitcover@comcast.net.