Would you approve a deal that immunized all members of the Trump family from prosecution in return for President Trump’s voluntary resignation?
I definitely would if it did not include the president himself. I’d let him save his children though.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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First thoughts.
We’d be left with Pence. If the deal was struck before the elections might make T’s base stay home. Dems would get control of House & Senate, Pence would be befuddled and chased out of the WH. Pelosi would take over WH next year.
Trump would find his Russian funding had left town and US banks would still stay away from him & his projects. Civil lawsuits would bury him financially.
Meanwhile his economic legacy would likely take hold and plummet the economy which could play into the hands of the 2020 Rep’s who will blame the collapse on the Dems.
Mmm, this isn’t as easy as I’d like it to be.
No – let them all swing!
If Pence wants to pardon them it’ll just be one more nail in his 2020 coffin.
Show some discipline – don’t impeach – don’t bargain – just let the law and the voters do their worst.
Haven’t we learned enough from previous pardons and actions to “save the nation further pain”, that like vampires; the political actors rise from the grave again and again to wreck havoc. Nixon functionaries begat Reagan and Iran/Contra, which begat W and Iraq War. No, even if it takes time, they all have to be exposed, shamed, and have felony convictions which will make they ineligible for further positions in Fed Govt. A Dem House will slow or stop most excesses of DJT and shine light on its corruption.
R
The Deal would have to be much more substantive.
First, all assets of the Trump family and the Trump organization shall be confiscated.
Second, all Trump family members shall be exiled to Russia, barred from ever returning the United States.
Third, all relevant family members (Senior, Junior, Ivanka, Jared) must plead guilty to criminal conspiracy and treason and they must freely allocute in court. If any Trump defendant recants on that allocution at any point during the remainder of their life, their life long probation shall be revoked and they shall be returned to the United States for their execution.
That’s not really a deal.
Unconstitutional as a punishment since the ’50’s.
Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86
This is the case, incidentally, that established the “evolving standards of decency’ standard, used in Furman v. Georgia, that for a time, anyways, eliminated capital punishment
Sounds a like a very accurate score.
AG
Hey! But we do “spy swaps” don’t we …just trade what are obviously Russian assets for some of ours …
Yes, I would definitely take it. It would get him out of the WH. No guarantee that it would happen any other way.
I’m not worried about Pence. He has no political charisma. And the republican platform is going to be very unpopular, especially when the current boom ends, which it surely will at some point. Pence is a sure goner in 2020.
It would be ok with me if Trump got immunity too. This isn’t about him, or my personal feelings about him…it’s about what he is doing to the country.
My first reaction is I suspect you are right. Let’s just throw him to the dogs.
Chances are good that Pence will pardon Trump even if he can’t or doesn’t do it himself. But he could pardon his kids anytime or in 2020 say after he lost the election and Pence could pardon Trump then.
Maybe.
If it included renouncing their US citizenship (all of them), exile, and a lifetime ban from returning to the US.
NO. the donald has made it clear that he does not care about the well being of other peoples children. Letting him go off with his children is no deal. There have got to be preconditions. No attys. No tweets. No Fox. The terms of his exit should be a political and not the media, congress or courts to decide.
EXILE!!!
Just like the Greeks and Romans.
AG
The best thing might be for Trump to simply be neutralized and left twisting slowly in the wind. In some ways this has already happened. Not even his own cabinet pay heed to his twitters. The GOP in congress, while dominant, can’t get anywhere with these stupid gimmicks like resolutions to fire Rod Rosenstein, government shutdowns, etc.
And no, I don’t want Pence or any of these clowns taking over for Trump.
I think this could be workable if Dems do well enough and the GOP badly enough in the midterms. I see the potential in present developments for the collapse of the Republican Party through internecine warfare, incompetence, and collusion in the Trump collusion.
Spin out the impeachment proceedings over a year and a half or so, the majority of the country will be so sick of these clowns and their Russian controllers they will have little future in American politics.
Not that everyone will suddenly become a Democrat, Liberal, or Progressive. But that they are going to have to really clean up their act, maybe form a new party, and leave the Trumpistas in the padded cell of what remains of the “Pathetic Old Party”.
BooMan,
You and many others have written that the problem isn’t just Trump: it’s the entire GrOPer assemblage, including hangers-on, think-tanks, etc. The entire shooting match. They’re all slowly (then suddenly, faster) going to hell in a handbasket, and we’re chained to them.
So it seems to me that merely getting him out of office, while laudable, won’t fix what’s broke in our country. If we’re going to let him off, I think it needs to be via a Truth-and-Reconciliation commission, where he’s forced to testify to everything he did, incriminate everybody he did it with.
Heh, the cynic in me hopes that he’d grab at such a thing with both tiny hands. Hell, for that, I’d even cancel any civil penalties and let him keep his empire (such as it will be, once Vladi calls in his loans). And that the asshole in him would jump at the chance to shiv his fellow-travelers (“You knew I was a snake when you took me in”).
I love the idea of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Trumpism. The Trumpets need to hear the stories of those whom they are responsible for harming, directly or indirectly by supporting the cruelty and sadism of this administration.
An #US TOO movement!!!
A lovely thought.
AG
Execute them all, display the heads til pecked clean, leave the bodies to stray dogs
Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86 determined that you can’t feed industrial waste to stray dogs.
Ceteris paribus, I’d like a return to the rule of law.
I believe that we really have to understand the full depths of the conspiracy against our country before any attempt at justice is made. It appears that Mueller understands that very well and that’s one of the reasons (the other big one is the pardon power) he hasn’t yet charged Americans for any of the Russia stuff yet. For example, does the conspiracy go to the depths of the Republican party and their most significant donor organization, the NRA? If so, anything that prematurely ends the investigation or lets the Republican congress or this administration whitewash what happened would most likely be a disaster- Mitch McConnell, Jim Jordan, Devin Nunes and the rest of the gang will go right back to their tricks in cahoots with a Pence administration to continue the destruction of our country.
Granted, Trump is doing a lot of damage and getting rid of him as quickly as possible would be a good thing, but it is really the job of congress to take his car keys away. Of course, at this point, you would think they at least would have grabbed the nuclear ones from him, but they haven’t even done that yet.
For me, the best case scenario is things pretty much muddle along as they are, congress passes a budget that Trump signs, D’s take both house & Senate, Mueller’s report comes out, both Trump & Pence get impeached and convicted in the Senate, speaker of the house becomes president and Trump is prevented from pardoning anyone because someone hides the pardon form from him… The worst case scenario: Trump blows up the planet. And, of course, just about anything between those two options are possible in the next six months.
In a fucking heartbeat. Like, before I even finished reading the sentence.
Its pretty likely that no matter how devastating Mueller’s report is, congress will not impeach. Even if he’s indicted upon leaving office, Pence would pardon him. So the possibility is good that Trump may not face justice, short of being forced to resign. This would be the kind of deal that could make it happen.
I would make the deal conditional upon all of them coming clean down to the last lie and detail, publicly, in open court; Trump included.
And the idea that we should want to keep Trump because a President Pence is a saner version of him who would do considerable more damage is nuts. Either way we’re stuck with a republican presidency for four years, a die that was cast when Trump “won” the election. But with Trump gone, the risk of a nuclear war or the country being sold out to a hostile power by a traitor in the oval office is drastically minimized if not eliminated altogether.
I’m one who believes there are many members of the GOP who are just as guilty as Trump and his family of selling out to the Russians. Any deal that gets Trump to resign would not include dropping any investigations that may arise against any of them, based on whatever evidence Mueller may have.
Mr Pence might be one of them.
No. I would have in the beginning, but not after the damage he has caused caused. We are in “sunk cost” territory at this point. He wouldn’t go quietly even if such a trade was on offer. Besides, we don’t know the full extent of the crimes committed.
I’ll tell you what…if we were guaranteed to get rid of him under this deal, and and the only way GOP agrees to remove him is under this deal, then I guess I would take it.
Besides, Junior is going to be indicted. We know this.
Trump would never take this deal; that would involve an implicit admission of guilt.
Not sure he would care about guilt. It would be fantastic publicity and leave him in charge of his “movement”.
He could even run again.
No. Because:
(1) With 40% of the electorate willing to accept whatever the Dotard does no matter what, the investigation needs to play out and expose the depths of the depravity committed by the Dotard, his lieutenants and his children.
(2) Pence. He may lack charisma, but at this point we cannot say that he is too right-wing for the majority of the Republican party. If he has the opportunity to succeed the Dotard, the Republicans in Congress will heave a sigh of relief and proclaim that everything is back to normal. That kind of “normal” would be a disaster, perhaps a worse disaster than the current state of affairs.
(3) Related to the above, despite the horrible acts committed by this administration, the current status quo, in which the Dotard is twisting in the wind and occupied by golf, watching Fox News and “executive time,” is preferable to an administration that could actually get things done.
(4) The Trump Organization is a symptom of everything that is wrong with predatory capitalism. Allowing the Dotard or his creepy children to go on running it and making obscene profits off the backs of third-world workers, not to mention the rest of us, is unacceptable.
(5) Ivanka clearly has developed political ambitions, and I suspect she thinks she could become the first woman president of the U.S. Please let’s not let that happen.
. . . preposterous.
But then so is Trump as preznit, and here we are.
Somebody seems to have convinced her that she could combine the Dotard’s base and moderate Republican women into a winning coalition. How to explain otherwise her announcement that she is going to stay in Washington and pursue “public service,” and her well-publicized differences with her father on the press as enemy of the people etc.? Since she does not have any convictions of her own, I must conclude that this is a purposeful strategy.
Perhaps she expects civil unrest will require the suspension — indefinitely — of elections in 2020 and thereafter, leading in time to her following Donald I as President For Life.
I would add,
(6) The investigation has exposed how much white collar crime has been committed right out in the open, with no prosecution or even investigation by law enforcement. Nobody should walk.
.
. . . himself” would be non-negotiable and the absence of that condition a deal-breaker.
All of the above presupposes any one of a number of major moves that Trump could make.
Like a big war…Iran, maybe.
Or another false flag hit on the U.S.
Or a call to arms for his supporters.
Or fomenting a major riot or two or three and then siccing the National Guard on the rioters, provoking even more riots and a state of emergency.
And the beat goes on…
Bet on it.
AG
P.S. As the character Omar Little says in the great TV series “The Wire”:
Yup.
If that’s the absolute best we could do, my first thought is, sure, why not. But if Trump were allowed to be a free citizen outside the White House I suspect he’d continue to present a public threat in his capacity as a demagogue around whom the alt-right, white supremacists, nazis, Oath Keepers, and all the other scum of the nation would instantly rally. It might well be trading one existential threat with another one of similar magnitude.
. . . himself” was booman’s condition for his approval. This would preclude (presumably, since the overwhelming preponderance of the publicly known evidence says he’s guilty as sin of a wide range of crimes):
Yeah, I got part of that a little backwards. In Booman’s stipulated scenario, I still see almost no way Trump is penalized with incarceration of any sort–not even house arrest.
Now in the event that Trump actually sees the inside of a prison for his crimes, then we have to brace ourselves for various pants-wetting overgrown childrens’ brigades grabbing their stockpiled munitions and erupting in sporadic militia-style shooting attacks throughout the nation in response.
No. Don’t even think about it. Did you learn nothing from the Nixon pardon? When a guilty person is seen to escape the consequences of their actions, it discredits the entire system.
And not holding George W Bush, Cheney accountable. Or many in the Reagan administration.
So many analogies, so little time.
A lot of people have been waiting to see who would be Trump’s Butterfield. Now we see that, I was waiting all the while to see who would be Trump’s Poindexter; but sooner, we will see who will be Trump’s Matteotti.
But Trump must not, at any price, be allowed to have a Ford.
No.
The Trump family have spent the last several years enriching themselves by corrupting our government – paying themselves millions in tax cuts alone and accepting bribes in all forms. This deal by Kushner is just the latest example:
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/kushner-family-escapes-burden-of-666-fifth-ave-via-lease-agreement
-with-brookfield-2018-08-05
In return they’ve saddled the country with trillions in debt.
So far, Trump and his children have made a fortune by trashing our country. Their actions should be punished severely. We don’t want to encourage that behaviour from future wanna-be oligarchs. Threat of prison and confiscation of their ill-gotten gains is the only thing keeping them in line.
Yes…only IF the deal was made directly with Trump.
Therefore, knowing he won’t read it the negotiators can slip in a few things:
Like the deal does not exempt them from criminal prosecution or civil suite at the state level. I mean who are we to get in the way of all those States Rights! ™ that Republicans go on and on about when they don’t control the White House?
And, he withdraws every nominated federal judge yet to be confirmed including Kavanagh. The seats stay open until after the next Presidential election has been certified by independent UN observers (I know…but this is a fantasy question).
I don’t see Trump resigning and being replaced by Pence as much of a gain. He’ll do just as much or more to lower wages, cage children, kill minorities, and destroy the environment. Based on his statements on the Russia investigation, and given that Manafort was pushing hard for him, the Russians own him just like they own Trump.
At this point the story is all about winning elections, and taking at least one House of Congress in 2018 and the trifecta in 2020 is essential. I don’t think replacing Drumpf with Dense is going to help with that.
We’ve let people skate for Watergate, for Iran-Contra, for the Iraq War, for torture and for the Great Recession. All that happens is that they turn up like bad pennies every time Republicans take power.
It’s 2018 and we’re still dealing with Roger Fucking Stone. We shouldn’t be dealing with Donny Jr in in 2038. Let them all rot in prison, including Trump’s criminal spawn.
No mercy for Trump or family…..I was against Nixon getting off because had he paid for his wrong doing there might never have been a Trump fiasco.
This a serious crime against our voting; our democracy depends on an educated electorate. We can see by Trump’s nightly rallies that he has no concern about educating his base. If members of his family engaged in unlawful acts they must be charged or it will happen again and again.
What a mistake it would be to let this man and his family members walk with no penalty. We must insist, at least, that our officials protect and defend our Constitution
No, let the process prosecute to the fullest extent: impeachment, removal from office, indictments, trials, incarcerations, and lawsuits. And don’t forget, the party of bigots and greedy people has a way of rebranding itself and staying competitive, regardless of the infractions.
No
No
Hell No
Hell muthaphucking NO 😠😠
No. I want them ALL to be marched out in orange jumpsuits. ALL.
If you get Pence first, like they did with Agnew, it would be even better…