The American Presidency, a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card
Politics is not supposed to be a Monopoly Game, fighting over Boardwalk and Ventnor Avenue. We’ve somehow contrived to build ourselves a winner-take-all society, and now it’s coming for the presidency. Unless, of course, we wake from this bad dream in time.
Finally, we have two presidential candidates for the upcoming November election, one a seasoned criminal prosecutor, and the other a seasoned criminal.
The latter has already held the office for one term, and he’s thirsty. Unable to retain either his cabinet or official advisors, unwilling to read or understand his daily briefing, compiled by the the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA, his thirst is ego-driven and never quenched. An alleged friend to dictators, who stroked that ego, and who became his oasis, valued and patronized above trusted agencies. A serial-liar, during his first term as president, the Washington Post authenticated over 34,000 lies he told to citizens he’d sworn to protect.
The Republican presidential candidate is a convicted felon, the first in American history
In Virginia, Tennessee, Iowa, Kentucky and Florida, it’s illegal to vote if you have a felony conviction. Since Mar-a-Lago has been his primary residence since 2019, he is (apparently) ineligible to vote for himself in November.
Other states have lifetime disenfranchisement policies for some offenses, but not all. Arizona, for example, requires the payment of restitution to file for restoration of rights after a first felony offense. Try that one on for size, times thirty-four.
In Alabama, certain crimes of “moral turpitude” (their words, not mine) remain ineligible for restoration. After a first felony, citizens are also required to pay off fines, fees, court costs and victim restitutions. And in Delaware, certain offenses are disqualified from rights restoration, like murder, bribery and sexual offenses.
Talk about ticking off all the boxes on your final exam
1) In a Federal Indictment in a Florida documents case (postponed until after the election), a Grand Jury charged him with Willful Retention of National Defense Information, Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice, Withholding a Document or Record, Corruptly Concealing a Document or Record, Concealing a Document in a Federal Investigation, a Scheme to Conceal, and False Statements and Representations.
2) The State of Georgia, in a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) charge, indicted the former president with Conspiracy to Commit False Statements and Writings, Conspiracy to Commit Forgery in the First Degree, Conspiracy to Commit Filing False Documents, Filing False Documents, as well as False Statements and Writings.
3) The State of New York indicted the former president on 34 counts for Falsifying business records by labeling hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels made through attorney Michael Cohen as legal expenses, when they were not. Cohen paid Daniels, and then Trump repaid Cohen, classifying the payment to Cohen as part of a retainer agreement, when in fact it was not. He was found guilty on all 34 counts in a jury trial.
4) United States of America v. Donald J. Trump, Conspiracy to Defraud the United States, Conspiracy to Obstruct an Official Proceeding, Obstruction of and Attempt to Obstruct an Official Proceeding, and Conspiracy Against Rights, all charges related to an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, culminating in the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Currently delayed under appeal.
5) E. Jean Carroll v. Donald J. Trump, relates to two related lawsuits by author E. Jean Carroll against the 45th president of the United States. The two suits resulted in a total of $88.3 million in damages awarded to Carroll. Found guilty by a jury, both cases are under appeal.
The former president’s hopes of staying out of jail depend upon his winning the November election
As a sitting president, all this misery would go on automatic hold for four years, a virtual Get-Out-of-Jail Free Card. During that time, his publicly stated aim is to demand that the Department of Justice undo the various Gordian knots of both his impending and current convictions. Whether or not that is legally possible has never been tested, but one would assume it requires majority control of both the House and Senate.
A secondary benefit of winning re-election is his spoken intent to liberally apply pardons to those convicted and imprisoned for their January 6th, 2021 assault on the Congress, along with various other currently imprisoned co-conspirators.
Lurking in the background, is Project 2025, also known as the 2025 Presidential Transition Project
The Republican hopeful claims ‘absolutely no knowledge’ of that plan, although Trump took a private flight with the Project 2025 leader, Kevin Roberts, in 2022 to speak at the Heritage Foundation Conference. Following that speech, he said, “They’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do."
Never heard of these people, eh Donald?
J.D. Vance, his vice-presidential candidate, wrote the Forward to Project 2025
“The old conservative movement argued if you just got government out of the way, natural forces would resolve problems—we are no longer in this situation and must take a different approach. As Kevin Roberts (2025’s author) writes, ‘It’s fine to take a laissez-faire approach when you are in the safety of the sunshine. But when the twilight descends and you hear the wolves, you’ve got to circle the wagons and load the muskets.’
“We are now all realizing that it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets. In the fights that lay ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon.”
Wow. Who knew? Certainly not the former president
Project 2025 runs over a thousand pages, and if you wonder what the 2025 Presidential Transition Project has in mind, and which candidate it’s tailored for, chew this one over: the team that created the project is chock-full of former Trump advisers, including director Paul Dans, who was chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management while Trump was president. Dans left the project in late July, clearing the way for Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts to take over. He said he was leaving during the presidential election season, in order to "direct all my efforts to winning, bigly.”
Project 2025 proposes…
…that the entire federal bureaucracy, including independent agencies such as the Department of Justice, be placed under direct presidential control - a controversial idea known as "unitary executive theory". In practice, that would streamline decision-making, allowing the president to directly implement policies in a number of areas. The proposals also call for eliminating job protections for thousands of government employees, who could then be replaced by political appointees. The document labels the FBI a "bloated, arrogant, increasingly lawless organization.” It calls for drastic overhauls of it, and several other federal agencies, as well as the complete elimination of the Department of Education.
I guess if you believe in ‘unitary executive theory,’ you’re pretty much in favor of getting rid of the ‘balance of power’ enshrined in the executive, legislative and judicial triad, and founded in our Constitution.
This multiply convicted Republican candidate thinks that’s all ‘pretty swell’ and believes in it ‘bigly.’
On Tuesday, November 5, 2024, America will make the choice between bigly and legally.