After leaving the country fractured, President Donald Trump seeks to evade his responsibility to justice. The country is going through its darkest hours.
With each passing hour, more and more revealing details about the capture of the Capitol in the American capital are emerging, which allow us to assimilate the magnitude of the crisis. On Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley to ask for assurances that President Donald Trump will not have access to nuclear weapons considering his mental instability.
The intentions of some of the subversives to find Vice President Mike Pence to execute a gallows outside the compound for “treason” were heard in the Capitol corridors on Wednesday. In photos we could see that, in fact, there was a fork installed and a cross. In internet forums, trumpeters are not only asking for Pence’s head, but now also Trump’s own.
Fans of the president feel betrayed by him after he finally acknowledged defeat on Thursday, after two long months of unfounded and futile legal battles. The time has come for them to accept that the president’s campaign to reverse the results was only about protecting their business and their ego. Now the anger and frustration of this mob poses a latent threat to all.
All this is not an exaggeration, but to show how pronounced is the collapse of what seemed to be the strongest democracy on the planet and to make it clear that what is happening is not a national problem, but a global one. But while everything is in chaos, and the world is plunged into uncertainty by this and twenty more crises, to Donald Trump seems to follow-important only one thing: him.
On Thursday night, The New York Times published an article in which it noted that Trump was looking to forgive himself. Not a surprise. Since stepping on the White House, the president has raised the idea with his close circle and his lawyers. Trump has been seeking a pardon for him even before his government officially began. He has also sought it out for his allies. In recent weeks we have seen a wave of pardons to figures like Roger Stone, George Papadopoulos, Michael Flynn, among others. All involved in the Russian plot scandal. Trump’s goal with these pardons, and with his self-pardon, is to block their path to justice so they don’t investigate him for irregularities in his government.
But Trump isn’t just considering forgiving himself these days. He also has a list of names he hopes to forgive. This includes his eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump; to his son-in-law, Jared Kushner; to his personal lawyer, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, already Fox News presenters like Kimberly Guilfoyle, who turns out to be the girlfriend of his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr. There are also others like Alberto Pirro, who did business with Trump and was convicted of tax fraud.
Celebrities like rapper Kodak Black or football player Lamar Jackson are also there. But these are distractions from big fish. Kushner was in charge of Trump’s peace plan in the Middle East, so many questions arise as to why the president wants to pardon. This would bury many secrets about the Trump administration forever.
The list of scandals in the Trump administration is huge. This week, nothing more, it was discovered that he was trying to pressure the Georgia Secretary of State to help him reverse his defeat there. This is conspiracy to vote fraud. But there was no time to react to it. Wednesday was the assault on the Capitol and all attention was focused on that. Because of the severity of the episode, which has left five dead, Trump faces charges of conspiracy to seduce. The president urgently needs the pardon to escape the investigations, but getting it has made it harder for him after he has passed Congress.
The first option Trump had was to issue a pardon while in office. Can you do that? The Constitution does not clarify this, and this is because the drafters of this document considered it unnecessary. That trying to forgive oneself was an act of corruption of power and that this was implied. Trump seeks to take advantage of this gap. But it faces many barriers. In 1974, after the “Watergate” scandal and the administration of Richard Nixon, the Justice Department issued a legal opinion stating that “the president cannot forgive himself,” as fundamental rule “no one can be a judge in his own case.”
As Brian Kalt, a professor at Michigan State University School of Law, told Bloomberg, “the main argument in favor is that the Constitution does not expressly rule it out and that the power of forgiveness is extremely expansive.” On the contrary is that “the idea of granting forgiveness is, by definition, something that can only be done to another person.” That, plus the legal opinion of the Justice Department, does not predict success for Trump. His case would reach the Supreme Court, where, although he has put three of the four judges, he could be defeated in what would mean the most humiliating defeat of his entire government.
There is another option for Trump: resign. If he resigns, Pence would assume power and could grant him a free and absolute pardon, as former President Gerald Ford did with Nixon after his resignation. But the relationship between Pence and Trump is deteriorating. The takeover at the Capitol marked the break. According to Reuters, Pence is looking not to talk to Trump again, though that route should not be ruled out. The United States has shown that as long as Trump is on the radar, anything can happen. That Trump gets a pardon is a real option. If anything should be clear to us of his attempts to achieve this is, as Benjamin Wittes points out in The Atlantic magazine, that the president would be accepting his responsibility in several scandals of which he is accused.
“The Supreme Court has suggested that accepting a pardon involves admitting the crime pardoned. And while there is some debate as to how far this is right, certainly granting a pardon strongly implies that the president believes there is a fault that requires forgiveness or that the beneficiary as the recipient of a pardon accentuates the individual’s guilt.Prummy would be effectively announcing that he has been involved in acts that could expose him to criminal prosecution (thus claiming his own guilt); accepting forgiveness then, he would be admitting, to some extent, his own accusation, “Wittes points out. But forgiveness, in addition to infuriating his opponents and now also this mob that risked his life for him and being betrayed would create a bad precedent for the country. It would mean any president in the future would deny any criminal investigation using presidential pardon as a “card to get out of prison.” This would be the worst legacy of his presidency.
What’s left then?
The most recommended option, as Democrats and analysts point out, is a political trial. It’s the route for Trump not to go unpunished. However, this also poses gigantic challenges. Trump’s mass is divided between those who felt betrayed and those who remain loyal to him.
On Friday afternoon a group of trumpeters confronted Republican Senator Lindsey Graham at the airport accusing him of being a “traitor.” He was until recently one of the president’s most loyal bishops. Graham said the political trial is now a bad idea, not because he wants Trump’s total impunity, but because he believes the way the atmosphere in the country is would be to throw more firewood at him.
“Any attempt to accuse President Trump would not only be unsuccessful in the Senate, but would be a dangerous precedent for the future of the presidency. Two parts will be needed to heal the nation,” Graham wrote. In this he is right, but the price is impunity. The week that political trial charges could be filed in the House. If this process is not accelerated, they run the risk of Trump trying to forgive.
Trump anticipated destroying order. He has succeeded. The whole of the United States walks on fragile ground, and beside them, also the world. The clock keeps ticking and every hour adds more tension and gloomy details to the final season of the Trump show.
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