The charges against Mr. Trump are not minor infractions.
Though the Court dismissed them on technical grounds, Trump was charged in three separate cases with using his presidency for his own private advantage, in violation of the emoluments clauses. The clauses are repeated several times in the Constitution to block a president or other office holders from using their office to sell the interests of the nation for their own personal benefits. We call that corrupt. Trump was impeached for corruption when he explicitly put American interests on the auction block in his call with Zelensky. That’s not minor.
In a case stalled on appeal over whether special counsel was properly appointed, Trump was indicted on multiple counts of keeping top secret files, some of which he showed off to his friends. Top secret files contain information that could be useful to foreign powers against the United States. Once Mr. Trump left office he had no legitimate use for those files. Mistakes happen – he is not being charged with mistakes but with knowingly keeping files whose disclosure could be dangerous to the United States. I don’t know what he was planning but breaching American national security is not a minor infraction.
Trump has been convicted of multiple counts of falsifying business records coming out of his payment of hush money to hide his violation of religious norms with a porn actress and other women. That’s not the official charge in the Stormy Daniels trial but it was the underlying problem that Trump was trying to conceal. Trump made himself vulnerable to blackmail over his sexual misbehavior. He may have misjudged the impact of his misbehavior on his reputation but he took it seriously enough that he violated the law repeatedly to conceal it. Vulnerability to blackmail reflects a serious problem.
Trump has been charged with trying to overturn the 2020 election – the president is the person charged with the responsibility to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” and to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution. Yet the record is clear, he not only instigated the insurrection, but sat smiling in the White House while watching coverage of the January 6 attack and refusing to take any action to stop it. That was disloyal. He was trying to hold office in defiance of the votes, the American people, the states, including Republican dominated states, which certified the votes to Congress, and the constitutional method for resolving disputes over the ballots. There is no justification for a president to try to take apart the constitutional system for his own continuance in office – that’s the seediest of misbehavior by foreign tyrants that we consistently condemn.
What we have is a record of a man who consistently puts his personal interests and desires above those of the American people – corruption, insurrection, leaving himself open to bribery and intimidation by foreign governments and unpatriotic billionaires for their own interests. He doesn’t deserve the votes of anyone who cares about America.
Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.
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