Israel certainly has some public relations problems on the international stage but they’re still widely seen as a competent country with a highly sophisticated political system, technology sector, and legal and regulatory system. I doubt anyone thinks less of Israel because they sent former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to prison in 2016 for bribery and obstruction of justice. He served two-thirds of a 27-month sentence.
Likewise, France isn’t popular in some sectors, but no one thinks it’s a banana republic because they gave former President Jacques Chirac a two-year suspended prison sentence in 2011 for diverting public funds and abusing public trust. If he hadn’t been 79 and in ill health, he might have gone to jail, too. On March 1st, former President Nicolas Sarkozy received a three-year prison sentence (two years suspended) for corruption and influence peddling, and yet France’s reputation remains intact.
Then there is South Korea, one of the world’s best performing economies, where in January the high court upheld a 20-year prison sentence for former President Park Geun-hye.
Park was initially sentenced to 24 years in prison after she was found guilty on multiple counts of abuse of power, bribery and coercion. Those charges related to a massive influence-peddling case that prompted widespread protests, implicated some of the country’s most powerful figures and saw her removed from office in 2017.
Park’s 2018 sentence was reduced to 20 years last July following a retrial. Prosecutors appealed that sentence and requested a heavier penalty, but on Thursday, South Korea’s Supreme Court upheld Park’s 20-year jail term, according to a news release from the court.
Last I checked, no one was disparaging South Korea as a result and I sense no less of international reputation.
First World economic powers with representative forms of government can send their corrupt leaders to prison without suffering serious or lasting harm. While their actions certainly caused internal political ripples, none of these countries were thrown into civil war over their insistence on accountability.
American pundits, however, seem to think it would be a terrible precedent to throw a corrupt ex-president in prison. President Ford is widely applauded for pardoning Richard Nixon, for example, even though letting him off set its own troubling precedent.
There’s definitely a bias in favor of letting bygones be bygones, which impacted President Obama’s Justice Department when they took a look at some of the crimes of the 2001-2009 Bush administration. It’s almost definitely having an effect on Biden’s Justice Department right now as it looks at Donald Trump’s crimes.
But if there’s a bias against prosecuting former presidents, there’s a much bigger taboo against taking legal action against a prospective presidential candidate. There are good reasons for this, as we’ve seen countries like Russia bring spurious legal actions against political challengers to the ruling regimes.
Yet, this creates a situation where one good way to avoid (or, at least, delay) prosecution for genuine crimes is to run for president. If you win, you may never be held accountable. We saw one example of this when Trump, once elected, was immediately able to settle a lawsuit against his fake Trump University for a paltry $25 million. Yet, even if you lose, you can rely on the reluctance of the victor to prosecute a former rival since it could be construed as political revenge and would rile up the opposition.
Trump understands all of this. Fear of legal problems probably fed his refusal to concede the 2020 election and his subsequent coup attempt. The best protection he has now is the norm against bringing legal action against a former president. But that isn’t dissuading New York and Manhattan prosectors and it may not ultimately dissuade prosecutors in other states or within the Department of Justice.
That’s why, from a legal defense point of view, he absolutely should say he’s running for president again in 2024. He should do this even if he has no actual intention of following through with it.
Trump has told at least three people he’s dined with in recent months that he plans to run in 2024, a former senior official at the Republican National Committee tells Rolling Stone. “I have three friends who’ve had dinner with him in the last couple of months. All three reported that his current plans are to run for president in 2024,” the former R.N.C. official says. “Now, whether he does or not is a different issue. We’ve still got three years to go. But he’s telling people that.”
The ex-R.N.C. official says the first two dinners took place in late spring. But the third dinner happened in the last two weeks, the official said. The first two dinner companions came away from their conversations convinced Trump was serious and he’s running, the official adds. The third said he left the dinner “not 100% sure Trump wants to run but he likes being in the conversation, he wants to freeze the field, and he wants his name out there,” according to the ex-R.N.C. official.
As a pure narcissist, Trump certainly wants to stay relevant, so that’s an additional incentive to keep his hat in the ring. But the main reason he can’t swear off another run is because he’s a criminal with massive legal liabilities. The Biden administration is not eager to prosecute him now, and will do so only with great norm-breaking reluctance, but they’ll be several times more squeamish about putting their presumptive 2024 opponent on trial.
So what you’re saying is TFG is going to get away with it, again.
Well, New York doesn’t care, I don’t think, but it’s generally the best protection to be actively running, or at least to be perceived that way.
As Martin said, not prosecuting Nixon and throwing his ass in jail set some VERY BAD precedents for law and order in this country. I’m not sure if this is our “original sin” of failing to hold folks accountable, but I feel like all of the follow-on events (Iran-Contra, torturing people, lying us into wars, etc) stem from that initial poor response to Watergate (which maybe wasn’t even the worst thing Nixon did… like interfering in the peace talks with the Vietnamese). All of this sort of crap makes me extremely skeptical of our government. But we have so many pressing problems (because we’ve kind of been not working on them going on many decades now) that we don’t have the time to do the look back at what happened before and prosecute the shit out of the law breakers. But these are interwingled problems which can’t actually be addressed separately.
If Trump and Friends are not prosecuted for their crimes because Trump was President at some point in the past when he committed some of those crimes, than this country is fucking dead, because the next Republican President will have rightfully learned that there are absolutely zero repercussions for holding onto power regardless of an election or a law.