Other countries have prosecuted their leaders. What took the U.S. so long?

https://www.npr.org/2023/04/03/ [login to see] /trump-indictment-us-rare-other-countries-prosecute-leaders
Former President Donald Trump may be the first U.S. president to face criminal charges, but he's hardly alone on the global stage.

Plenty of other democracies have prosecuted their current or former leaders.

Two former French presidents, Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, were convicted of corruption after their time in office. Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was found guilty of tax fraud in 2012 (though, over a decade later, was acquitted of several charges stemming from a 2010 sex-for-hire case).

In South Korea, which has a long history of prosecuting its former leaders, former President Lee Myung-bak's 17-year jail sentence for corruption was cut short when he got a presidential pardon last year. The previous year, a court upheld a 20-year jail sentence for former President Park Geun-hye over the corruption scandal that led to her impeachment in 2017.