Donald Trump is now a convicted felon, found guilty by a jury of his peers in the city in which he was born and raised and lived for the first 70 years of his life. The front page of his former hometown newspaper looked like this today: Republicans have all rallied in support of the Dear Leader by whining and complaining about the judicial system being used against a political opponent, apparently trying to convince the American people that anyone running for office should be immune from prosecution for their crimes. (That’s pretty rich coming from the crowd that chanted “lock her up” for four solid years.) Needless to say, every one of the lawsuits filed against him and the crimes he is accused of were being very publicly investigated long before he decided to run for president again. In fact, there’s a good case to be made that that’s why he did it. As the LA Times Doyle McManus pointed out back in October of 2021: As long as he’s running (or even sort of running), Trump can denounce every inquest and subpoena as just another part of a political vendetta. It’s a way to hold his troops together — and to make every prosecutor think twice. He didn’t have to run for president. There were a whole bunch of Republicans who ran against him in the primaries, ready and willing to take on the job. But Trump needed to run so that he would be able to say…