All posts by Nathalie Christian

Big Oil, California oil industry, Carbon emissions, Climate Change, F Minus, Lobbying

‘Guns for hire’ – 1,500 lobbyists representing liberal, green clients ‘also working’ for fossil fuels firms

[Note from BenIndy Contributor Kathy Kerridge: There is a lot of talk about addressing climate change, and some action, but much of the current action like funding carbon capture and storage is expensive, promotes the continuation of using fossil fuels and does not work.  This article may get us to thinking about why that is.]

‘Double agents’: fossil-fuel lobbyists work for US groups trying to fight climate crisis

A new database of fossil fuel lobbyists shows how they represent clients with contradictory aims. Illustration: Javier Palma/The Guardian

New database shows 1,500 US lobbyists working for fossil-fuel firms while representing universities and green groups

The Guardian, by Oliver Milman, July 5, 2023

More than 1,500 lobbyists in the US are working on behalf of fossil-fuel companies while at the same time representing hundreds of liberal-run cities, universities, technology companies and environmental groups that say they are tackling the climate crisis, the Guardian can reveal.

Lobbyists for oil, gas and coal interests are also employed by a vast sweep of institutions, ranging from the city governments of Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia; tech giants such as Apple and Google; more than 150 universities; some of the country’s leading environmental groups – and even ski resorts seeing their snow melted by global heating.

The breadth of fossil-fuel lobbyists’ work for other clients is captured in a new database of their lobbying interests which was published online on Wednesday.

It shows the reach of state-level fossil-fuel lobbyists into almost every aspect of American life, spanning local governments, large corporations, cultural institutions such as museums and film festivals, and advocacy groups, grouping together clients with starkly contradictory aims.

For instance, State Farm, the insurance company that announced in May it would halt new homeowner policies in California due to the “catastrophic” risk of wildfires worsened by the climate crisis, employs lobbyists that also advocate for fossil fuel interests to lawmakers in 18 states.

Meanwhile, Baltimore, which is suing big oil firms for their role in causing climate-related damages, has shared a lobbyist with ExxonMobil, one of the named defendants in the case. Syracuse University, a pioneer in the fossil fuel divestment movement, has a lobbyist with 14 separate oil and gas clients.

“It’s incredible that this has gone under the radar for so long, as these lobbyists help the fossil fuel industry wield extraordinary power,” said James Browning, a former Common Cause lobbyist who put together the database for a new venture called F Minus. “Many of these cities and counties face severe costs from climate change and yet elected officials are selling their residents out. It’s extraordinary.

“The worst thing about hiring these lobbyists is that it legitimizes the fossil fuel industry,” Browning added. “They can cloak their radical agenda in respectability when their lobbyists also have clients in the arts, or city government, or with conservation groups. It normalizes something that is very dangerous.”

The searchable database, created by compiling the public disclosure records of lobbyists up to 2022 reveals:

  • Some of the most progressive-minded cities in the US employ fossil-fuel lobbyists. Chicago shares a lobbyist with BP. Philadelphia’s lobbyist also works for the Koch Industries network. Los Angeles has a lobbyist contracted to the gas plant firm Tenaska. Even cities that are suing fossil fuel companies for climate damages, such as Baltimore, have fossil fuel-aligned lobbyists.
  • Environmental groups that push for action on climate change also, incongruously, use lobbyists employed by the fossil-fuel industry. The Environmental Defense Fund shares lobbyists with ExxonMobil, Calpine and Duke Energy, all major gas producers. A lobbyist for the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund also works on behalf of the mining company BHP.
  • Large tech companies have repeatedly touted their climate credentials but many also use fossil fuel-aligned lobbyists. Amazon employs fossil-fuel lobbyists in 27 states. Apple shares a lobbyist with the Koch network. Microsoft’s lobbyist also lobbies on behalf of Exxon. Google has a lobbyist who has seven different fossil fuel companies as clients.
  • More than 150 universities have ties to lobbyists who also push the interests of fossil-fuel companies. These include colleges that have vowed to divest from fossil fuels under pressure from students concerned about the climate crisis, such as California State University, the University of Washington, Johns Hopkins University and Syracuse University. Scores of school districts, from Washington state to Florida, have lobbyists who also work for fossil-fuel interests.
  • A constellation of cultural and recreational bodies also use fossil-fuel lobbyists, despite in many cases calling for action on the climate crisis. The New Museum in New York City, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Sundance Film Institute in Utah all share lobbyists with fossil-fuel interests, as does the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and the Florida Aquarium. Even top ski resorts such as Jackson Hole and Vail, which face the prospect of dwindling snow on slopes due to rising temperatures, use fossil-fuel lobbyists.

Cities, companies, universities and green groups that use fossil fuel-linked lobbyists said this work did not conflict with their own climate goals and in some cases was even beneficial. “It is common for lobbyists to work for a variety of clients,” said a spokesperson for the University of Washington.

A spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art said it had retained a lobbyist on the F Minus database “for a period during the pandemic … We are not currently working with the company.”

A spokesperson for the Environmental Defense Fund said that working for big oil is “not, in itself, an automatic disqualification. In some cases it can actually help us find productive alignment in unexpected places.” Microsoft said despite its lobbying arrangements there is “no ambiguity or doubt about Microsoft’s commitment to the aggressive steps needed to address the world’s carbon crisis”.

But the vast scale of the use of fossil-fuel lobbyists by organizations that advocate for climate action underlines the deeply embedded influence of oil, gas and coal interests, according to Timmons Roberts, an environmental sociologist at Brown University.

“The fossil-fuel industry is very good at getting what it wants because they get the lobbyists best at playing the game,” Roberts said. “They have the best staff, huge legal departments, and the ability to funnel dark money to lobbying and influence channels.

“This database really makes it apparent that when you hire these insider lobbyists, you are basically working with double agents. They are guns for hire. The information you share with them is probably going to the opposition.”

A Promised Land, Democracy, Stephen Golub, Trump

Stephen Golub: The U.S. has a mixed record of promoting American-style democracy abroad

[Note from BenIndy Contributor Nathalie Christian: While I think all of Steve’s posts are well worth the time it takes to read them, I really encourage everyone to sit down with this one, especially because we’re still very close to Independence Day. The seeding, care and feeding of democracy abroad is a complicated undertaking at the best of times. Keeping it alive and thriving in our own garden has become a surprisingly fraught enterprise, too. Steve’s thoughtful analysis of what has and hasn’t worked provides a reasonable framework for the cultivated endurance of democracy and, perhaps more importantly, it provides at least me with very welcome hope.] 

This post was produced by Benicia resident Stephen Golub and originally appeared in the Washington Post‘s ‘Made by History’ section. Steve blogs about domestic and international politics and policy, including lessons that the United States can learn from other nations, at A Promised Land: America as a Developing Country. If interested, you may sign up for future posts by subscribing to the blog.

For 40 years, the U.S. government has ignored what sorts of democracy promotion work — and which ones don’t

Image uncredited.

By Stephen Golub, July 4, 2023

Benicia resident and author Stephen Golub, A Promised Land

As America celebrates Independence Day, we find our democracy not nearly as strong as we’d once thought. Authoritarian challenges threaten our institutions, our rights and the rule of law.

Ironically, this sobering reality confronts us after the United States, along with affluent allies, has devoted decades and massive resources to trying to build democracy in the world’s poorer and post-communist societies, including via rule of law, good governance, human rights and anti-corruption programs. With some exceptions — mostly centered on providing electoral assistance and fortifying civil society and media — these efforts have largely fallen flat. Data from Freedom House, the World Bank and the World Justice Project confirm the decline in democracy and associated fields across the globe.

Why the widespread failure? First, we hubristically bit off more than we could chew. The United States mistakenly assumed that foreign aid for training and equipping recipient nations’ government institutions could overcome the deep-seated political, historical, economic and cultural forces permeating them and could thus build democracies in our image.

Second, in focusing most democracy aid on such government institution-building, the United States put a relative paucity of resources into nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and other civil society forces that modestly but more effectively strengthen specific policies, processes and populations.

In some ways, the roots of this failure reach back to our experience in the Philippines at the outset of the 20th century. At that time, America’s imperialist endeavor drove the Spanish from the archipelago and brutally crushed an indigenous independence movement. During the next half-century, we built corrupt, elite-controlled government institutions instead of strengthening grass- roots participation in representative government. This became an unintentional template for our subsequent democracy-building abroad decades later.

That template became salient when, in the 1980s, a host of actors and factors combined to make democracy a U.S. foreign policy priority.

Providing political cover for its wars in Central America and right-wing allies throughout Latin America, the Reagan administration funded government-focused, ostensibly democracy-promoting programs in the region. The unfortunate upshot was, for example, partnering with human rights-violating governments on major and, ultimately, unsuccessful administration of justice initiatives to which officials in our partner nations were actually resistant or indifferent. Similarly flawed and government-focused U.S. democracy programs arose alongside backing for authoritarian Cold War allies elsewhere.

In a more promising development, the 1980s also saw bipartisan support for the new National Endowment for Democracy, new U.S. Agency for International Development projects and other U.S. initiatives that provided small grants to civil society and media initiatives around the world. But such funding was (and is) dwarfed by major USAID programs and related support for government institutions.

This funding disparity meant that, as the United States started pouring money into top-down programs geared toward building American-style government institutions abroad, it tended to downplay support for civil society programs that could directly benefit and strengthen populations poorly served by those institutions.

By contrast, various private funding sources prioritized civil society. The Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corp. and other donors made grants to South African NGOs pursuing anti-apartheid legal activism. Financier George Soros began providing funds for innovators, budding democracy activists, journalists and international exchanges as Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union slowly started to liberalize. The partly U.S.-funded but private Asia Foundation supported Bangladeshi NGOs’ innovative local dispute resolution work. (I worked for the foundation elsewhere, and later evaluated and researched that work.)

These privately supported efforts exhibited promising results as they expanded their operations and impact in the 1990s. They contributed to significant health, housing and other victories in South Africa after the racist regime stepped down. Bangladeshi NGOs’ local dispute resolution models gathered steam — and support from additional donors and the Bangladeshi government itself — by ameliorating gender inequities and providing the poor with alternatives to a distant, corrupt and incomprehensible judicial system.

Around the world, both foundations and donor nations alike funded a growing array of NGOs featuring paralegals who, unlike those working in U.S. law offices, were typically community-based volunteers whom NGO attorneys trained and collaborated with. They advocated for and with their communities and fellow citizens to address health, housing, land, gender and other issues.

These programs thrived at the same moment that the United States and other affluent nations began pouring greatly expanded sums into seeding democracy worldwide in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Eastern European communist regimes and the Soviet Union. Books on “exporting democracy” — even presenting it as America’s destiny — assumed it was the wave of the future.

Yet, the United States ignored the success of the projects funded by foundations and clung to the notion that foreign aid to governments could secure dramatic democratic transformations. This partly stemmed from foreign policy priorities, including the post-Cold War perspective that fortifying U.S.-friendly capitalist democracies was in our own economic and political interest. But it also flowed from a bureaucratic reality: It was easier to secure funding in Washington for ambitious programs that promised to build up national ministries, legislatures and judiciaries than for local programs that worked with farmers, women or other disadvantaged groups.

Maintaining this unfortunate focus, George W. Bush linked his post-9/11 military and political programs to both defeating terrorism and installing democracy, stoking cynicism in many circles about that latter effort. Even if viewed in the most charitable light, U.S. democracy-building efforts in Afghanistan proved no match for the dominance of warlords and — as with some other aid recipient nations — entrenched corruption networks that permeated the government.

The past two decades have seen U.S. democracy aid flow and ebb, in response to such events as the Arab Spring and its demise. This aid has continued to feature a blend of foreign policy priorities, immense bureaucracy, hubris, cynicism and idealism. Its misplaced priorities have endured: Despite the documented success of paralegal programs, for example, many have suffered funding cutbacks from American and other sources.

All of this helps explain the mediocre record for U.S. democracy promotion: The United States has focused too much on working with change-resistant institutions and too little on supporting the civil society and media change agents that might gradually affect such institutions over the long haul. Even in the short term, these shortchanged programs have a record of helping citizens bring about concrete results — improving farmers’ land tenure, combating corruption, reducing violence against women, enhancing communities’ health or strengthening inputs into local governance, among other goals. They may not be as sexy as transforming a country’s government, but history indicates such programs actually work.

All told, the United States has poured about $100 billion into democracy aid over the past 40 years, mostly for large-scale, government-focused programs, often designed and implemented by international consulting firms.

However, despite far less funding, homegrown projects that draw on local knowledge — which foreign consultants and aid officials lack — and that help partner populations pursue economic, health, political or human rights priorities have proved far more successful.

In a related vein, U.S. support for free and fair elections — programs often carried out by American NGOs that provide election-oriented monitoring, advice and training — has yielded notable achievements. Such programs have protected electoral integrity in some instances and fueled successful drives to challenge corrupt results in others, including Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution.

With the exception of such dramatic electoral results, civil society support may not produce the seismic shifts that American officials seek. But neither has the top-down, institution-building approach that has fruitlessly gobbled up vast resources.

Authoritarians are strong until they’re not. History is littered with the downfalls of repressive regimes that once appeared firmly entrenched. Just recently, the world saw Vladimir Putin’s seemingly iron hold on power shaken by the corrupt forces he himself enabled.

Thus, the global pendulum may yet swing back toward democracy. Helping to make that happen, in however modest a manner, demands supporting the kinds of efforts that have worked in the past and rethinking those that have not.

These lessons apply at home as well. Even as we honor Independence Day, the health of our government institutions seems in question. But a vibrant civil society, a thriving free press and safeguarding elections can protect those institutions’ integrity, keeping the flames of political accountability burning and ensuring that our democracy endures.

This post was produced by Benicia resident Stephen Golub. Steve blogs about domestic and international politics and policy, including lessons that the United States can learn from other nations, at A Promised Land: America as a Developing Country. If interested, you may sign up for future posts by subscribing to the blog.

Read more from Steve by visiting his blog or clicking any of the links below.

POSTS FROM STEPHEN GOLUB:

Benicia, Benicia Police Department, Benicia School Board, Benicia Unified School District, La Migra

Poor representation for Mexican-Americans created a cultural vacuum in Benicia. ‘La Migra’ filled it.

Sheri Leigh speaks with long-time Benicia resident about ‘La Migra’ for a Mexican-American perspective

Sheri Leigh
Sheri Leigh, Benicia resident and educator.

I first connected with Jennifer (a pseudonym) when she responded to my editorial on the ‘La Migra Games,’ which I posted on Nextdoor as well as local newspapers. When I met with her, I felt very much at ease with this highly educated and soft-spoken 65-year-old Mexican-American woman. She shared her experiences as a woman of Color in this community and the pain elicited by the title and intent of the ‘La Migra’ games. Tears came to my eyes as she talked about never feeling accepted by the people in this community and the trauma of growing up as a child of undocumented parents. We are both new grandmothers, each of a child with Mexican heritage, and we both fervently hope they do not have the same fearful experiences. 

Photo by ev on Unsplash.

Jennifer and her husband first moved to Benicia when their daughter was very young. They moved here for the quiet, connected community and the quality of the schools. She lived in Benicia for 15 years, while her daughter attended Benicia public schools. When her daughter graduated, Jennifer moved closer to her job in East Bay, returning to Benicia upon her retirement. 

During her first 15 years in Benicia, Jennifer was an involved parent of a Benicia student. She was frequently in the company of other local mothers, usually as the only woman of Color in the group. She often felt isolated at meetings. The other women mostly ignored her when chatting or attempted awkward engagement by making disingenuous comments about her ‘exotic clothing’ and colorful styles. Jennifer felt out of place, but continued to participate for the sake of her daughter. 

Jennifer’s conversations with her daughter revealed that her child felt much the same way. Jennifer’s daughter was a good student and became involved in many activities. Most of her daughter’s ‘friends’ were white, but she admitted to her mother that she felt uncomfortable at social activities. She thought she was invited not because she was considered part of the group, but because she was a novelty, a child of mixed race who didn’t feel like she fit in. The girl didn’t see other children who looked like her or who had a Mexican mother. The daughter was so uncomfortable growing up in Benicia that when she went on to college, she vowed never to live here again. 

Events and programs honoring Latin America’s varied and rich cultural heritage are relatively rare in Benicia, even though Hispanics and Latinos represent almost 14% of our population, making them our second-largest demographic group. | Photo by Fili Santillán on Unsplash.

When Jennifer moved back to Benicia a few years ago, she was hoping for more diversity and progress towards equity. Instead, she became even more aware of the lack of inclusion for people of non-white heritage in this community. She was especially disheartened by the blatant disregard for Mexican culture or history. Even though there is a significant Mexican-American/Latino population living and working in the area, Jennifer could not help noticing that there is little to no discussion or celebration of Mexican Independence Day, Day of the Dead, or Cinco de Mayo in Benicia schools. There has been no representation of Mexican culture at our Diversity Festival in the last two years. 

It is in this cultural vacuum that students began to play a chase ‘game’ they call ‘La Migra.’

When Jennifer saw the alert from the Benicia Police Department on Nextdoor about the ‘La Migra’ games, she was horrified. She saw the title as a tribute to the terror undocumented individuals have experienced over the last 75 years – and continue to experience – when pursued by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents (ICE), who are commonly referred to as La Migra. 

Years of cruelty and corruptive collaboration between ICE officers and agriculture operators like growers have added to their fears. It was not uncommon (and still isn’t) for farmers to hire a crew of undocumented workers during harvest season only to call ‘La Migra’ and have their workers rounded up for deportation during the final days of the job, to avoid paying them the agreed upon, below-market rate for the hard work they had done. The lack of humanity in this unethical practice is comparable to antebellum slavery practices. 

ICE raids targeting food processing plants led to the detention of more than 680 workers in one Mississippi county in 2019. Worried children separated from their parents waved them goodbye, unable to return home until their community picked up the pieces. | Rogelio V. Solis, AP.

Jennifer’s father and grandparents were among those industrious, yet undocumented Mexican migrants who escaped from the extreme poverty, disease and unsafe conditions of their homeland to make a better life for themselves and their family in the US. They spoke in hushed tones about their plans should ‘La Migra’ find them. She heard stories about the abuse suffered by captured immigrants at the hands of ‘La Migra,’ and feared for her family’s lives and her own, if something should happen to them. The title of the ‘game’ triggers trauma she and millions of other undocumented Latinos have experienced over generations of pursuit. Sadly, their experience is NOT a game. 

Jennifer had commented on the police Nextdoor article, comparing the game to a hate crime, but was met with backlash. When my article came out, she messaged me privately because she was too traumatized by her previous experience, having faced a torrent of angry and spiteful commentary from many insensitive readers. Withstanding the abuse, she then made calls to the police department, the Mayor’s office and Benicia’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Manager about the games – but her attempts to elicit some reassurance and response were met with varying degrees of professional dismissiveness. Jennifer still feels demoralized by the lack of concern from both the Nextdoor readers and the public officials. Rather than being valued, she senses hostility from other members of our community and complacency within the leadership of the government and schools. 

I feel honored that Jennifer shared her story with me. Hers is the experience of a daughter of immigrants who has done everything she can to be a hard-working, law-abiding, caring and productive American – yet she is continually treated as a second-class citizen. 

Aren’t we all human beings with experiences and feelings that deserve to be recognized, honored and respected? Didn’t many of our ancestors and family members who came here willingly, come to this country to escape hardship and work towards a better life? Jennifer cares about this community and the people in it. 

If the ‘La Migra Games’ brings this pain to Jennifer, I will share her burden, as should we all. 

Share your story

If you would like Sheri to hear and share your perspective on the ‘La Migra’ Game, please contact her through the Benicia Independent. Remember that it is your story that is critical for others to hear, not your name, unless you would like to be identified.
Reach out to Sheri: benindy@beniciaindependent.com
Leave a voicemail for the BenIndy: ‪(707) 385-9972‬

(This is not a live line. You will be sent straight to voicemail.)

LEARN MORE ABOUT ‘LA MIGRA’

Versions of this story may be shared by other print and online sources, including the Benicia Herald. The Herald does not have an online edition. To support our local newspaper, please subscribe by email at beniciacirculation@gmail.com or by phone at 707-745-6838.

A Promised Land, MAGA extremists, Stephen Golub, Trump

Stephen Golub: The One Court That Will Decide Trump’s Fate

This post was produced by Benicia resident Stephen Golub. Steve blogs about domestic and international politics and policy, including lessons that the United States can learn from other nations, at A Promised Land: America as a Developing Country. If interested, you may sign up for future posts by subscribing to the blog.

The One Court That Will Decide Trump’s Fate

A US Courthouse in Lower Manhattan. | Image uncredited

It’s Not Any of the Usual Suspects

By Stephen Golub, July 3, 2023

Benicia resident and author Stephen Golub, A Promised Land

It seems like you can’t tell a Trump trial or investigation without a scorecard these days. There are dozens of them.

Regardless of what you think of him, you’d think that courts in Washington, Florida, Georgia or New York would determine Trump’s ultimate legal fate.

Think again.

Let’s Be Civil

To start with, two upcoming New York City trials are both noteworthy.

The New York State Attorney General’s suit against him for massive financial fraud is set for October. She’s seeking a $250 million fine and to bar him, his family and his firm from doing business in the state that serves as his headquarters.

Following the favorable verdict for E. Jean Carroll in May, in which she won a $5 million judgement against Trump for sexual abuse and defamation, he verbally slammed her for her victory. This in turn will be a focus of her related $10 million defamation suit against him, which is slated for trial in January.

However, as civil lawsuits, the fraud and Carroll cases don’t carry that ultimate penalty of potential imprisonment. There’s even the possibility of Trump raising enough funds from his followers to at least partly offset his financial penalties if found liable. Nonetheless…

The Current Criminal Cases

A threat of incarceration faces the ex-president, through two current criminal indictments.

There’s the Stormy Daniels hush money prosecution, brought by the Manhattan District Attorney in connection with Trump paying the adult film star on the cusp of the 2016 election, in return for her not revealing their affair. It starts next March in New York City.

Then there’s the pending trial most in the news recently: U.S. Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith’s national security documents case, which will be held in Florida at some point. The DOJ has charged Trump with lying about and otherwise obstructing the return to the U.S. Government of classified materials.

As the indictment states, those papers pertain to “defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to foreign attack.”

Furthermore, “The unauthorized disclosure of those classified documents could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military, and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods.”

Not exactly bathroom reading, eh? Though that’s where Trump reportedly stored some such items.

But Wait! There’s More!

Finally (for now, at least), there are two additional investigations which quite possibly will see Trump indicted this year.

It appears increasingly probable that, within the next several months, Special Counsel Smith will charge Trump in Washington, D.C. for activities connected to the January 6th insurrection or various other kinds of electoral interference pertaining to the 2020 election.

The Fulton County District Attorney, in Georgia, is expected to announce in August a decision regarding whether and whom to indict regarding 2020 electoral interference, possibly including multi-state racketeering chargesrelated to Trump pushing for the selection of “alternative electors” who could have subverted the Electoral College vote.

Image uncredited.

How Many Trials Was That?

From four to very possibly six major trials loom in Trump’s future.

Nonetheless, none of them seem likely to determine Trump’s legal fate and accountability in the most fundamental manner possible: whether he goes to prison. That decision rests in the hands of another court. Here’s why.

As I’ve noted, prison isn’t an option in a civil trial.

The New York hush money case is nothing to scoff at. But it’s arguably the toughest criminal case to win against him, and the one least likely to get him imprisoned even if he’s found guilty.

Instead, what becomes of Trump could conceivably hinge on the national security, insurrection and electoral theft trials that could consume much of next year. But whether the ultimate outcomes of those cases will actually be decided in Florida, Washington or Georgia courtrooms is another matter.

There already are indications that the national security documents case could be pushed back until after Election Day 2024. For one thing, the Trump-friendly judge presiding over the trial simply could decide to finalize the date for then or otherwise stymie the prosecution. For another, special considerations regarding national security trials also could delay the proceedings. And of course, there are the delaying tactics that Trump attorneys exploit in any litigation involving him.

The complexity of the potential, election-related federal and Georgia prosecutions could also delay the prosecutions of Trump for those crimes.

But such considerations are not the fundamental reasons why the courts hearing those cases might not decide Trump’s fate, unless of course they find him not guilty. This, it must be emphasized, is certainly possible. Such a verdict could be a legitimate outcome in a given case, as much as some might think or wish otherwise. Or, in a less legitimate vein, it could prove more probable by virtue of rulings that the Trumpist judge in the Florida documents trial could make.

Democracy in Action

But let’s put aside the potential “not guilty” outcomes for now.

Rather, Trump’s dodging the legal bullets rests on his getting re-elected (or perhaps another Republican winning in 2024, and then doing Trump some very big favors). Here’s how:

  • President Trump could in effect halt federal trials that haven’t started or been completed.
  • He could pardon himself if convicted.
  • He could similarly exert pressure to get a Georgia verdict in effect negated.

More specifically, Candidate Trump has made no secret of his plan to appoint an attorney general who will do his bidding, including halting a federal prosecution. If already convicted by the time he’s elected, he’ll seek to use his pardon power to spare himself.

Now, such scenarios are not a lock. Trump could of course lose the Republican nomination or the general election. A Democratic-controlled Senate could refuse to confirm his kind of compliant Attorney General, though that might only prove to be a stopgap measure. The Supreme Court could decide that a president can’t pardon himself. Many other twists and turns could take place.

Georgia on My Mind

But what about the potential Georgia case? It should be on our minds partly because the state prosecution there would not be controlled by the (potentially Trump-appointed) U.S. attorney general and a conviction there would not be subject to the possibility of a presidential pardon. But…

In May, Georgia’s governor signed into law the establishment of a commission with the power to remove local prosecutors who “refuse to uphold the law.”  There also is the possibility that a different Georgia law could be amended by the Republican-dominated state government to allow for a speedy state pardon of Trump even if he’s convicted.

Image uncredited.

The Court That Counts

So, both federal and state prosecutions could conceivably be halted, or their convictions effectively negated.

Which brings me back to my original point. As crucial as the actual and potential Trump trials are, they probably won’t ultimately determine whether he goes to prison. As much as we yearn for the rule of law to trump politics, these crucial outcomes might not be the product of what judges and juries decide.

Rather, Trump’s legal future hinges on the November 2024 election, and on all of the intensity that will entail. That’s so sobering for a nation that prides itself on its rule of law, on no person being above the law and on justice being beyond vote counts.

In other words, the crucial verdicts regarding these profoundly serious charges will not be decided by courts in Washington, Florida, Georgia or New York.

The verdicts will be rendered by the court of public opinion.

This post was produced by Benicia resident Stephen Golub. Steve blogs about domestic and international politics and policy, including lessons that the United States can learn from other nations, at A Promised Land: America as a Developing Country. If interested, you may sign up for future posts by subscribing to the blog.

Read more from Steve by visiting his blog or clicking any of the links below.

RECENT POSTS FROM STEPHEN GOLUB: