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.
A US Courthouse in Lower Manhattan. | Image uncredited
Jack Smith is doing his job. The rest is up to us.
Yesterday, a grand jury indicted Donald Trump for, in essence, trying to gut American democracy. In securing that indictment, Special Counsel Jack Smith launched a case of unprecedented importance to our country.
I’d thought that I might greet the news with relief that the inevitable has come to pass, or despair over what Trump’s abuses signify, or trepidation over the societal ruptures that await us.
But I feel something far more stirring. Not quite elation.
Pride.
I’ve spent my career working to promote democracy and the rule of law across the globe. As I’ve written, the effort has largely flopped, though there have been powerful exceptions to that unfortunate rule.
One of the heartbreaking aspects of this endeavor has been how blind America has been to our own failures here at home. Even as the United States has sought to teach, train and tut-tut other societies about their democratic and legal shortcomings, we’ve ignored our own glass house.
But at this one historic moment, this country has lived up to its promise.
On this one day, we’re seeing the rule of law in action in its most vital sense: No one is above the law.
The indictment, practically free of legalese and packed with persuasive detail, makes for compelling reading. It portrays how Trump and six so-far unindicted and unidentified co-conspirators undertook a multi-stage drive to undo the election results. It superbly illuminates how they sought to pressure state and federal officials, line up fake electoral college electors, bulldoze then-Vice President Pence and ultimately ignite a mob, all in order to block Joe Biden from being certified as president-elect on January 6.
By citing abundant incriminating evidence from Trump’s own top aids and allies, including contemporaneous notes by Pence, it also shows how Trump knew that his allegations of electoral theft were lies.
In an irony that perhaps will not go unnoticed by Trump’s nativist and white nationalist fans, both the federal magistrate to whom the indictment was presented and the federal judge who will oversee the case are immigrants, respectively from India and Jamaica.
Now, none of this is to say that any of this will play out well, even if Trump is convicted. Things will get ugly, vicious, maybe even violent.
Nor does it compensate for what got us here, from Trump’s depravity to his followers’ tribal loyalty to Republican leaders’ craven acquiescence to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s ill-advised delay in approving the Trump insurrection investigation.
Furthermore, as I’ve previously suggested, the ultimate forum that will decide Trump’s legal fate will be the court of public opinion. That is, whether he will be held legally accountable for his alleged crimes against this country will probably hinge on whether he wins next year’s election.
But this first step had to happen. At this pivotal point in our history, we had to move from a hypocritical glass house to a literal, crucial courthouse. Smith and his team will do their best to hold Trump accountable for his crimes.
Now, the rest of us must do our part to ensure that Trump loses in the court of public opinion as well.
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.
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 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.”
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…
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.
I don’t know…. I got soooo tired of the Donald show every morning for four-plus years. I was sick of being sickened. Maybe I still am, and especially now that the January 6 Commission is filling our heads with the inside scoop on Tyrant Trump and his treasonous enablers. Seems fitting to take a breather. So here’s a bit of fun from this week’s comics, and a seriously funny Jimmy Kimmel video at the end. Enjoy?
Memorial Day honors Americans who died while performing their military duties in our armed forces. This year, it is accompanied by attempts to make Americans sleepwalk through history.
The holiday arrives but three days after Senate Republicans blocked the formation of a bipartisan commission that would have investigated the January 6th Capitol insurrection. And it comes just one day after the Texas Legislature tried but temporarily failed to adopt one of the most stringent voter suppression laws in the country.
What we have, then, is a national holiday commemorating our history, following on the heels of a major political party seeking to deny it.
As former Republican George Will put it, “I would like to see January 6th burned into the American mind as firmly as 9/11 because it was that scale of a shock to the system.” Yet in filibustering the commission into oblivion, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and company sought to minimize a day that, like both 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, should live in infamy.
Even worse, the move seeks to prevent our fully finding out what happened that day. What did Donald Trump know and do – or deliberately fail to do – while the Capitol was under attack? Who else failed to act, and why? What kinds of collaboration might have been going on among the rioters and with outside forces?
Then there’s the Texas legislation, temporarily derailed when Democrats walked out and denied the Legislature a quorum, but sure to resurface and most likely pass when Gov. Greg Abott calls a special session later this year. Among other things, the bill “included new restrictions on absentee voting; granted broad new autonomy and authority to partisan poll watchers; escalated punishments for mistakes or offenses by election officials; and banned both drive-through voting and 24-hour voting, which were used for the first time during the 2020 election in Harris County, home to Houston and a growing number of the state’s Democratic voters.”
It’s but the latest and perhaps most ambitious of the like-minded slew of democracy-gutting proposals that Republican-controlled state governments are pushing into law across the country in preparation for the 2022 and 2024 elections.
It’s also part and parcel of the Republican effort to promote the Big Lie, still bought by 61 percent of Republicans in a national poll just two weeks ago, that the election was stolen from Donald Trump. The circular justification for the voter suppression in Texas and elsewhere is that in the wake of 2020 people have doubts about election integrity – doubts spurred by the Big Lie and its associated prevarications.
It’s all so 1984. But in addition to Ignorance is Strength, we have lies are facts. Instead of a Ministry of Truth, we have Fox News going even more whole hog to promote this hogwash in response to viewer encroachment by Far(ther) Right outlets Newsmax and One America News.
Why Did They Die?
And we have an ongoing attempt to erase recent history and memory.
Which brings us back to today’s holiday. The Americans mourned on Memorial Day gave their lives for many things: their country, their communities, their families, their friends, the folks in their squads. A more cynical take would explain some deaths in terms of their leaders’ sometimes dubious foreign policy goals.
Regardless, one thing many died for – or at least felt they were dying for – is democracy. What an irony that they fell defending it abroad only to have it threatened here at home.
In downplaying and perpetrating the greatest internal attacks on our democracy since the Civil War, congressional Republicans and other Party leaders are desecrating the graves of the fallen.
Let me be clear: I’m not attacking the many, many Republicans who have served and love America. But with shockingly few exceptions, the Party’s leaders have made the GOP into something shockingly destructive.
And for what? No grand principle. No crying need. Just the tawdriest of causes: to fuel and appease some voters’ repugnance against people who supposedly don’t belong; to cling to power and perks at all costs; to sell their souls for 30 pieces of political silver.
History Is What We Make It
But the story does not end there. We’re not helpless in the face of these attempts to flush recent history down the toilet. We can donate, campaign, educate and otherwise act to combat the danger. Texas Democratic legislators scored a victory of sorts by delaying the voter suppression vote and ensuring it will get renewed scrutiny down the line. Congress’s Democratic leaders can go ahead and appoint a select committee to investigate January 6th, pointing out that they gave the Republicans every fair chance to go bipartisan.
We can be active participants in history, not simply observers. To act otherwise is to accept defeat in the middle of the battle.
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