Should Donald Trump be Prosecuted?
Obviously, Trump has some belief that the manner in which the election was won by Biden is unlawful, he thinks it was stolen through voter fraud and is conducting a range of different legal challenges in several different states to take his case to the next level. Legal action after an election isn’t unprecedented, but the scale of this action is. Trump’s supporters generally agree and hope for success in the legal cases, but Biden supporters, and many leaders worldwide, have placed their faith in the system, already giving victory to Biden.
What happens when it’s all over and the court cases, which must all be decided by December 8th, are done? Will Trump step down gracefully, or not? No one really knows the answer, most Trump opponents fear the worst and assume there will be nothing graceful about it. However, step down he must. The alternative is a constitutional crisis, his closest (and most honest) supporters will be giving him advice that stepping away is the right thing to do. If he fails to do so, there are procedures in place to remove him. Washington State Troopers will be given the job and they will be supported, managed and/or supervised by the Secret Service to ensure no harm comes to their charge.
There are many reasons why he would not want to leave the safety of the presidency: He has debts to the tune of many millions of dollars. Some reports say as much as 421 million and the office of president prevents him from being prosecuted or at least makes the process a lot more difficult. There are several outstanding cases of sexual assault which the office of president prevents from moving forward. One of them has his own Department of Justice blocking the courts from collecting the president’s DNA which, according to the victim (E Jean Carroll), will prove she was sexually assaulted 30 years ago. Bill Barr, the Attorney General for the USA is using the resources of his Department of Justice (DoJ) to prevent this DNA being legally collected.
There are many tax issues needing to be investigated. It seems he may have employed his daughter as a consultant and handed her large amounts of money for services. Hiring consultants isn’t illegal but handing large amounts such as $747,622 and pretending they are a business expense to avoid paying gift tax definitely is. He spends 70,000 a year on hair care and products, a long stretch for the tax department to accept as genuine business expenses. Many of his properties are valued as low income or low value, this minimises the amount of tax he needs to pay. There’s nothing wrong with this in theory, but the same properties have many outstanding loans where a high value was declared in order to obtain the loans. So, is the tax declaration fraudulent or the loan application? If either event proves to be true, a crime has been committed and the Southern District New York Attorney General, as well as the District Attorney for Manhattan, would like to discuss these matters with the President — that is, the SDNY AG would have liked to, had he not been removed from his job by the same DoJ that’s blocking the DNA application.
Trump and his daughter are banned from operating charities in New York because they used charitable donations as legal fees for court cases. In a similar vein he has, by his own legal counsel’s admission, used campaign fees to make payments to women. Stormy Daniels is a well-known case, that payment was $130,000. Another payment of $150,000 was made to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model. Allegedly, this money came from campaign contributions but, can’t be investigated while Trump is still president.
In fact, any investigation into Trump or his administration has found itself coming up against brick walls: As well as the recent removal of the Southern District of New York AG, it’s hard to forget that a whistle-blower came forward, leading to his impeachment, both the whistle-blower and the Intelligence community Inspector General (IG), Michael Atkinson, lost their jobs. The same thing happened in the State Department when an investigation was started into Mike Pompeo’s activities, the IG, Steve Linick was dismissed. There were allegations of impropriety in the allocation of resources to fight Covid19 and these were immediately stopped by the removal of the Transportation IG, Mike Behm. Next came the Health and Human Services IG, Christi Grimm who was removed as from her position as the pandemic started to take hold; she had announced widespread shortages of equipment when White House administration, led by Jared Kushner (Ivanka Trump’s husband) took control of the purchasing, supply and all movements of pandemic (PPE) equipment.
Accountability in the Pentagon, the arm of the government with the largest budget was changed when the Inspector General Glenn Fine was removed from his post too. Seemingly just as that department was to cover the oversight into the massive spending brought about by a stimulus bill worth 2 trillion dollars.
Will Trump be prosecuted? Probably not. A sensible approach will be for Trump to step aside, let Pence take over for a short transition period and offer Trump and his family immunity from ongoing prosecutions. Biden would be wise to accept this approach because if he decides to go after his adversary in any legal sense, there are still at least 70 million Trump voters who may decide that the best way to defend their hero is to attack the people hurting him. Civil War is the potential outcome of such a path. The satisfaction of seeing Trump face justice for many of his alleged crimes doesn’t outweigh the long-term stability and mending of the rift that currently tears the US into factions
