By Jacob Derin
Revelations this week that the Trump DoJ subpoenaed records from Apple on Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee are both shocking and entirely unsurprising. This fits into a broader pattern of corruption and fundamental disrespect for the rule of law which defined the Trump era. Hopefully, history will judge it as such.
At the time, the House was looking into the allegations that the Trump campaign had conspired with Russia in its interference in the 2016 Presidential Election. The DoJ subpoenas are just one more example of the administration’s efforts to frustrate the investigations into its conduct during the election.
The Mueller Report, despite its “no collusion” spin by Trump and his allies, detailed a series of efforts by the former President to stall or stop the investigation. Mueller lists 10 such instances of possible obstruction. So it’s hardly surprising that the administration used the subpoena power of the DoJ to further these efforts, but that makes it no less egregious.
Apparently, the administration was interested in finding out who had been leaking damaging information to the press. As part of its efforts to hunt the leakers down, it went after records, not only for top Democrats in the House, but their families as well. One of the targets was a minor at the time.
The whole affair calls into question the longstanding legal opinion against indicting sitting Presidents and the taboo against indicting former ones. After Nixon was forced to resign in disgrace, for instance, he was spared prosecution by a pardon from his successor Gerald Ford.
Ford argued that “the tranquility to which this nation has been restored by the events of recent weeks could be irreparably lost by the prospects of bringing to trial a former President of the United States. The prospects of such trial will cause prolonged and divisive debate over the propriety of exposing to further punishment and degradation a man who has already paid the unprecedented penalty of relinquishing the highest elective office of the United States.”
The logic behind this decision is understandable, and the possibility of politically motivated prosecutions of former Presidents is itself a serious threat to democracy and the peaceful transfer of power. However, taking into account Donald Trump’s unprecedented disruption of that process, disregard of democratic norms and the rule of law itself, the consequences of not prosecuting him would do even greater harm to American democracy.
As the New York Attorney General’s criminal probe into the Trump Organization moves forward with the impaneling of a grand jury, the possibility of prosecution creeps ever closer to reality. These charges, if they ever materialize, will likely be tied to financial and tax crimes committed by agents of the Trump Organization and its leadership, potentially going all the way to the top. But this simply isn’t good enough. In order to reestablish the principle that the President is not above the law, and that corruption in the nation’s highest political office cannot be tolerated, he must be prosecuted for crimes committed while in office.
One consequence of Trump’s decision not to attempt to pardon himself before Jan. 20 is that federal prosecutors still have the option to pursue such charges against him.
After the Jan. 6 insurrection, there can be no doubt that Trump is a catastrophically dangerous force in American politics, and any attempt to prosecute him runs the risk of a violent response by his supporters. But if Mitch McConnell and his party had the force of his convictions when he said on Jan. 6 that the government would not “be intimidated by thugs, mobs or threats,” they would support doing exactly that.
Jacob Derin is a third-year English and Philosophy major at UC Davis.
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Maybe we can move on to Trump after we show that Hilary Clinton is not above the law.
Conservatives’ Discussion Tactic No. 1: When you don’t have a good response, change the subject.
Progressives Discussion Tactic No. 1: Attack and blame Trump for everything even when your own party does the same things or worse.
No rational person believes that there is the slightest equivalence between Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump with respect to their behavior in office. This is just trolling.
I wish I had a nickel for every time I had comments deleted for saying someone else was trolling.
I would call it differences of opinions based on one’s biases.
How do you pretend that Trump is not an extraordinary outlier in American history?
The same way that Democrats and most of mainstream media pretend that Biden has all his faculties.
Or maybe because I’m not rational?
Hillary Clinton has never held elective office (let alone the presidency), so that might not be the best comparison.
I could have sworn she was elected Senator in NY
I don’t think your heart was in that one.
Woops – forgot about that. Was thinking about her time as Secretary of State.
This part has some truth to it, though. If you don’t believe that, compare his current speeches to those he gave when he was “tough on crime”.
Or, just watch the informal speech he gave in regard to “Peanut” (“Popcorn?”), as well as his hairy legs that kids liked to touch to watch his hair spring back after getting out of the water. Something like that.
Or, was it “cornflake”?
In any case, it devolved into something similar to the plot of Mad Max, as previously noted by the author.
Maybe I’m getting a touch of Bidenism. 🙂
The man in question viz a viz the alleged “Bidenism” was Cornpop, the legend among men.
I’d prefer you not refer to me as irrational 😐
Or, as the Soviets used to say, “And in your country, they are lynching black people.” The various misdeeds of Democrats do not somehow cancel those of Republicans. Instead, they simply compound the misery of everyone caught in between them.
The topic of this commentary is Donald Trump. Not Hilary Clinton, not President Biden.
As a more serious response, if one believes that the media favors one side or another, they won’t accept that it’s just about (fill-in-the-blank). And it is pretty clear that the media takes sides.
It’s also quite clear that a significant number of Americans see it that way as well, regardless of how the conversation is restricted on a local blog. One might conclude that this is leading to the divisiveness that’s reflected between political parties, as well.
Have you ever watched Norm MacDonald joke about Bill Clinton (and Vince Foster, as I recall)? I think he did so when Clinton was in the audience, as well.
In any case, he’s one of the most brilliant comedians around.
Maybe some folks are too wrapped up in identity politics to appreciate that.
He might have left out the part about Vince Foster, when appearing before Clinton. 🙂
The road narrows.
All of you who can’t let Trump go, learn from this wise old Chinese fable:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/as-republicans-set-trump-aside-democrats-cant-let-him-go
Barack Palin, signing off this thread for the night.
Brilliant, BP!
Jacob… DJT (his name is not to be mentioned, as it feeds into his ego and that of his mindless minions) will probably be like Al Capone… not convicted of political crimes (Al Capone was never convicted on violence/murder charges), but tripped up on tax evasion, business corruption…
Correct approach (other than the tax thingy) would be to shun him… make him an un-person… he feeds off strife/evil… like Valdemort… he uses clown makeup, etc., in order to ‘sell himself”, which, to his credit, he has done quite well… just waiting to see who his fourth ‘trophy wife’ will be…
Probably his daughter:
“If Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her”
– Donald Trump
“Don’t you think my daughter’s hot? She’s hot, right?”
– Donald Trump
There will likely be a parallel… Trump in the USA, Netanyahu in Israel…
Both are or likely to be indicted… both claim “the election was stolen”… both have similar builds, similar egos (XXL), similar verbal & media personas, etc. I find it amusing that the N guy cries for a stop to ‘the leftist turn’, while the new PM is actually farther to the ‘right’…
Both should be shown “not to be above the law”… both will probably do anything to avoid that.
Just saying… Putin is different… he IS the law… something DJT and the N guy aspire to… representative democracy is so inconvenient to ‘those who would be king’…