All three European monarchs were put on trial by their political enemies for supposed acts of treason: Mary, Queen of Scots in the Elizabethan Era (1586), Charles I in post-civil war England (1649), and Louis XVI during the height of the French Revolution (1792).

Now, let’s fast forward to the present (2023) and the current combo of federal and New York criminal cases against former president Donald J. Trump. Are there any possible historical parallels to these other great political show trials from the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries?

For my part, to the extent these Trump prosecutions are politically motivated–the Espionage Act of 1917, for example, has mostly been used by the Feds to punish journalists and dissidents; see here–perhaps the wisdom and fairness of using the legal system to go after a formidable political opponent like Trump should be reconsidered in light of the political show trials of Mary, Queen of Scots, Charles I, and Louis XVI.