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Under normal circumstances, it might not seem especially relevant to politics in the United States when a former elected leader in Europe is indicted, but this Associated Press report nevertheless stood out as notable from a domestic perspective.
Austria’s former Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has been charged with making false statements to a parliamentary inquiry into alleged corruption in his first government, which collapsed in a scandal in 2019, prosecutors said Friday. An indictment against Kurz, his former chief of staff, Bernhard Bonelli, and a third person was filed at the state court in Vienna, the prosecutors’ office that investigates corruption cases said in a statement. The court said Kurz will go on trial on Oct. 18.
I won’t pretend to have any expertise in Austrian politics — it’d be a stretch to suggest my background on the subject rises to the level of “superficial” — but as I understand it, the office of Austria’s chancellor is effectively equivalent to the office of prime minister that’s common in parliaments throughout Europe.
It’s against this backdrop that, according to the AP’s account, officials launched a corruption investigation in 2021, targeting events that unfolded while Kurz was still chancellor, and he testified as part of that probe. Prosecutors now allege that the former leader gave false testimony, which is a crime that could lead to a three-year prison sentence.
Kurz has denied wrongdoing and issued a statement in which he said he expects to be exonerated at trial.
What the former chancellor did not do was lash out wildly at prosecutors, target judges, attack the integrity of his country’s judicial system, or publish statements via social media that read, “PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK! ... IT’S TIME!!! ... WE JUST CAN’T ALLOW THIS ANYMORE. ... PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!”
The former Austrian leader also hasn’t publicly derided talk of “peaceful” demonstrations, while suggesting that his indictment might cause “potential death [and] destruction” that “could be catastrophic for our Country.”
You probably see where I’m going with this.
I can’t speak with any authority about Kurz’s scandal or its merits, but the fact that a former leader has been charged with a crime is not that unusual. To be sure, Donald Trump’s four indictments are extraordinary in the U.S. tradition — the Republican has broken new ground with his alleged crimes — but by international standards, the charges against the former American president are hardly groundbreaking.
In the wake of Trump’s indictments, much of the GOP settled on an unfortunate talking point: Only “third world” countries allow former leaders to face criminal charges. Such indictments are common in “banana republics,” Trump’s partisan allies have repeatedly argued, but stable and mature democracies wouldn’t tolerate prosecutors pursuing a former head of state, just because there’s evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
But this has never made any sense. Revisiting our earlier coverage, stable democracies that take the rule of law seriously hold criminal suspects accountable — even if they’re politically powerful, and even if they served in government at the highest levels. In fact, on the international stage, this has happened in recent years with some regularity.
Italy prosecuted a former prime minister. France prosecuted a former president and a former prime minister. South Africa prosecuted a former president. South Korea prosecuted a former president. Brazil has prosecuted more than one former president. Israel has prosecuted more than one former prime minister. Germany prosecuted a former president. Portugal prosecuted a former prime minister. Croatia prosecuted a former prime minister. Argentina prosecuted a former president.
As recently as June, Nicola Sturgeon, the former head of the Scottish government, was arrested on allegations of financial misconduct. Now, Austria’s former chancellor has been indicted, too.
These instances did not lead to violence. The criminal cases were tried without incident. These countries' political systems persevered just fine, without talk of institutional breakdowns.
As far as Republicans are concerned, should Austria — as well as the other aforementioned countries — now be considered a “banana republic”? Should we see these countries as engaging in law enforcement tactics on par with what “third world” countries do? The answer should be obvious.
Last fall, as the criminal investigations into Trump intensified, former Vice President Mike Pence tried to argue that the scrutiny itself sent “the wrong message to the wider world that looks to America as the gold standard.”
But much of the wider world has shrugged its shoulders in response to the charges against the Republican. The Daily Beast reported in March, after Trump’s initial indictment, “In the eyes of the world’s media, the indictment of Donald Trump was not the big freaking deal many Americans might expect. Save for a handful of English-language websites and newspapers, the story ranked beneath most regional and local concerns and in more than a handful it was found alongside or just above the coverage of other celebrity news items like the denial of parole to Paralympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius and the Gwyneth Paltrow ski accident trial.”
Around the same time, Secretary of State Antony Blinken participated in a discussion with his NATO counterparts, and he told reporters soon after that none of them brought up the criminal allegations surrounding the former president.
I’m not suggesting that it’s a good thing when a nation’s former chief executive is accused of crimes, but I am suggesting that it’s a relatively common thing in advanced democracies, Republican hysteria notwithstanding.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.