Fearing Jail and Facing Defeat, Trump Won’t Leave
Office Quietly
In the Age of Trump, no depravities are beyond the realm
of possibility.
By Bill Blum
July 18, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" - The presidency of Donald John
Trump is collapsing. Unwilling or unable to confront the
deadly realities of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has
claimed more than
138,000 American lives, the president’s
job-approval ratings have plummeted. The ravages of
the virus, in turn, have triggered a deep economic
slump, pushing
unemployment rates to levels not seen since the
Great Depression of the 1930s. There is a
growing perception that our 45th commander in chief,
never known for his intellectual acuity or moral
rectitude, is
unfit to lead the nation in this moment of extreme
crisis.
Even the Supreme Court, with two of his own appointees
on the bench, has seemingly turned against him. On the
last day of its just-completed 2019-2020 term, the court
released a
pair of
landmark decisions on presidential power, rejecting
Trump’s desperate attempt to quash subpoenas issued by
Congress and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance for
his tax returns and personal financial records. Writing
for a 7-2 majority in both cases, Chief Justice John
Roberts rebuffed Trump’s claims of sweeping presidential
immunity and reaffirmed the bedrock principle that no
one—including the president—is above the law.
According to
many polls, if the election were held today, Trump
would lose in a classic landslide. If
the pundits are correct, the entire Republican Party
could be dragged down with him.
Trump’s abiding corruption and incompetence have
prompted urgent calls for his resignation by
newspaper editorial boards,
columnists and activists like
Ralph Nader. Even before his stunning setbacks in
the Supreme Court, there was
considerable and
widespread
speculation that rather than face humiliation in
November, Trump will step down in the fashion of Richard
Nixon, or announce à la Lyndon Johnson that he won’t
seek reelection after all.
As the veteran commentator Robert Kuttner mused in a
recent article in the
American Prospect:
“If Trump senses a blowout defeat well beyond the
usual Republican margin of theft, [he] may decide
that it’s more dignified to retire undefeated. He
can claim that the election was rigged, that he
would have won, blah blah blah, and he can have the
satisfaction of agitating his base as
president-in-exile with no responsibility whatever
for the consequences.”
Regrettably, I have to demur. Trump will never
voluntarily stand aside. Trump will lie, cheat and steal
to retain the presidency by any means necessary, and
he’ll do so for one simple reason—once he is out of
office, he could be prosecuted for a trove of federal
and state felonies, and, if convicted, sent to prison.
No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is Independent Media
If he loses the election, Trump could be targeted by a
new Democratic attorney general determined to hold him
accountable for a laundry list of possible federal
offenses, including:
Obstruction of justice in connection with
the investigation conducted by former special
counsel Robert Mueller into suspected Russian
interference in the 2016 election.
Obstruction of Congress,extortion and bribery in connection with his efforts to
pressure Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to dig
up political dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden in
exchange for the release of U.S. military aid
previously approved by Congress.
Income tax and financial fraud for
underreporting the revenue earned from his
real-estate ventures, and misrepresenting the value
of his assets, as alleged by the
New York Times in a lengthy 2018 exposé.
Violation of campaign finance laws for
conspiring with his former lawyer Michael Cohen to
pay hush money to pornographic film star Stephanie
Clifford, aka “Stormy Daniels,” and former Playboy
model Karen McDougal in the run-up to the 2016
election. In 2018, Cohen
pleaded guilty to the Daniels and McDougal
payoffs. The complaint lodged against Cohen treated
Trump as an unindicted co-conspirator, referring to
him as “Individual 1” in keeping with
Justice Department practices, and alleging that
he directed Cohen to make the money transfers.
A particularly aggressive attorney general could also
charge Trump with
involuntary manslaughter for contributing to the
staggering COVID-19 death toll. Former federal
prosecutor Glenn Kirschner, now a legal analyst with NBC
and MSNBC, made the case for involuntary manslaughter in
an April interview with journalist Mehdi Hasan on the
Intercept’s
“Deconstructed” podcast.
“There are three things, what we call elements… that we
have to prove in order to hold somebody accountable for
involuntary manslaughter,” Kirschner
explained. “One, that a person acted in a grossly
negligent way or importantly for our purposes, failed to
act and that failure was a product of gross negligence…
Number two, their conduct was reasonably likely to
involve serious bodily injury or death to another as a
product of that grossly negligent act or failure to act.
And three, that they thereby caused the death of
another.” Kirschner argued that Trump’s record on
COVID-19 satisfies all three elements for criminal
liability.
At the state level, in the aftermath of his resounding
loss in the Supreme Court, Trump faces a more immediate
and practical threat of prosecution in New York, where
District Attorney Vance has pledged to “follow the
law and the facts, wherever they may lead.” Vance has
resumed a grand jury probe to determine if the
Daniels and McDougal payoffs, or any other aspect of
Trump’s financial dealings, violated state
fraud and
tax laws. Federal District Court Judge Victor
Marrero, who sits in Manhattan, has set an
expedited briefing schedule to hear any remaining
arguments from Trump’s attorneys to limit the scope of
the financial-records subpoena that Vance originally
issued to Trump’s accounting firm in August 2019.
Although it’s unlikely that Vance would seek an
indictment before the election, if he did, Trump would
not be shielded by the
Justice Department’s longstanding policy against the
prosecution of sitting presidents for federal crimes.
The policy, which dates back to Nixon and Watergate,
does not apply to the states. For purposes of charging
criminal offenses,
as the Supreme Court confirmed in 2019, the states
and the federal government are considered separate
sovereign entities.
After the election, if he loses at the polls, Trump
would also lose his federal protections against
prosecution once a new administration takes over in
January 2021. In the interim, left with precious few
options to avoid his day of legal reckoning, he could
swallow his pride, abruptly change course and resign,
hoping that Mike Pence, as his lame-duck successor,
would rescue him with a preemptive pardon, much as
Gerald Ford issued to Nixon.
Alternatively, Trump could choose to serve out the
remainder of his term and pursue a strategy of delay to
prolong any criminal investigations of his conduct until
after the applicable statutes of limitations for his
alleged crimes have expired. Under both
federal and
New York law, most felony prosecutions must commence
within five years of the commission of an offense.
And then there is a final Trumpian option that no one
should discount: In an ultimate act of destruction aimed
at saving his own skin, Trump could simply refuse to
leave the White House, claiming that the election
results are fraudulent.
As Michael Cohen warned in
his February 2019 testimony before Congress,
“[G]iven my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear
that if he loses the election in 2020 that there will
never be a peaceful transition of power.” Several
mainstream observers have voiced
similar concerns.
As ridiculous as it may seem to picture Trump clinging
to the “Resolute
Desk” in the Oval Office as federal marshals come to
remove him, just remember how ridiculous his
presidential campaign appeared when he
descended the escalator at Trump Tower to announce
his candidacy in June 2015.
In the Age of Trump, no depravities are beyond the realm
of possibility. We need to be prepared for anything and
everything. Bill Blum is a retired judge and a lawyer in Los
Angeles. He is a lecturer at the University of Southern
California Annenberg School for Communication. He writes
regularly on law and politics and is the author of three
widely acclaimed legal thrillers:
Prejudicial Error,
The Last Appeal, and
The Face of Justice.
Post your comment below
See
also
Record Number Of Americans REJECT
Republicans As White House EMBARRASSES
Itself
The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.
Search
Information Clearing House
===
The views expressed in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
In accordance
with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
is distributed without profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational
purposes. Information Clearing House has no
affiliation whatsoever with the originator of
this article nor is Information ClearingHouse
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
