Friday, November 20, 2020

JOE BIDEN AND BIG TECH - WELL, JOE ONLY GOES FOR 'BIG AS IN 'BIG BRIBES', BIG BANKSTERS, BIG PARASITE LAW FIRMS!

OLIGARCHY – BILLIONAIRES, BANKSTERS AND BAILOUTS

Biden’s Chief of Staff Worked on Behalf of Big Tech for Endless H-1B Visas

https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/11/joe-bidens-america-to-be-ruled-by-wall.html

 

“Joe Biden’s transition is absolutely stacked with tech industry players,” noted Protocol, an online publication that covers technology.

Hauser also didn’t like the prevalence of Big Law talent on the Department of Justice team, which signaled to him that the Biden administration could go soft on corporate malefactors. 

THE BILLIONAIRE CLASS WAGES WAR ON AMERICA!

"GOP estb. is using the $5 billion border-wall fight to hide up to four blue/white-

 

collar cheap-labor programs in lame-duck DHS budget. Donors are worried that

 

salaries are too damn high, & estb. media does not want to know." 

 

TOP EVIL CORPORATIONS LOOTING AMERICA

 

Goldman Sachs TRUMP CRONIES – CLINTON CRONIES

JPMorgan Chase OBAMA CRONIES

ExxonMobil

Halliburton BUSH CRIME FAMILY CRONIES

British American Tobacco

Dow Chemical

DuPont

Bayer

Microsoft

Google CLINTON CRONIES,  BIDEN CRONIES

Facebook OBAMA CRONIES, BIDEN CRONIES

Amazon BIDEN CRONIES

Walmart

JOE BIDEN SAYS MUCK PROGRESSIVES, I MADE MY DIRTY MONEY SERVING WALL STREET!

“Hauser also didn’t like the prevalence of Big Law talent on the Department of Justice team, which signaled to him that the Biden administration could go soft on corporate malefactors.” 

https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/11/joe-bidens-america-to-be-ruled-by-wall.html

“Joe Biden’s transition is absolutely stacked with tech industry players,” noted Protocol, an online publication that covers technology.”

“He was presumably referring to the two dozen agency review team officials who come from law firms like Arnold & Porter. Or to the 40 or so members of the Biden transition who are current or recent lobbyists.”

“During the summer, the American Prospect published a lengthy exposé about Biden’s foreign policy advisers’ lucrative foray into corporate America. Many are set to return to the highest echelons of official Washington.”



Progressive groups warn Biden that giving White House roles to anyone with Google ties, including its former CEO Eric Schmidt, would 'alienate' the nation

Kate Duffy
google eric schmidt
Eric Schmidt , former chairman and CEO at GOOGLE visits Fox Business Network Studios on April 16, 2019 in New York City. John Lamparski/Getty Images
  • More than a dozen progressive organizations published an open letter to President-elect Joe Biden Tuesday, warning him against appointing anybody with "close ties to Google" to his administration.

  • The groups wrote that they "want to ensure that the internet isn't dominated by a handful of corporations and remains free and open."

  • The groups said Biden should avoid giving former Google CEO Eric Schmidt a role, after a Financial Times story described Schmidt as a possible lead for a new tech task force in Biden's White House.

  • The letter to Biden said appointing Schmidt would risk "fracturing a Democratic coalition" and "alienating an overwhelming majority of the electorate."

  • A source familiar with the matter told Recode that the Biden transition team had not discussed a planned role for Schmidt.

  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Video: From heads of state to mask makers, the world acknowledges Biden’s win

More than a dozen progressive groups published an open letter to President-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday, urging him not to appoint people with "close ties to Google," including the tech giant's former CEO Eric Schmidt, to senior roles in his administration.

The 14 progressive groups — including The Revolving Door Project, a group which scrutinizes the appointments of executives in office — urged Biden to take a "hard line against the influence of individuals with close ties to Google."

The groups wrote that they "want to ensure that the internet isn't dominated by a handful of corporations and remains free and open."

The Financial Times reported November 8 that Schmidt was being discussed as a possible lead for a new technology industry task force in the White House, without describing its sources.

Biden has not publicly discussed a role for Schmidt, and Silicon Valley sources close to the Biden team told Recode Tuesday they weren't aware of any plans to appoint Schmidt. One source familiar with the matter also said the Biden transition team had not discussed a planned role for Schmidt.

A spokesperson for Schmidt declined to comment to Business Insider.

The letter, also signed by the Open Markets Institute, the Communications Workers of America, the Action Center on Race & the Economy, and others, said an appointment for Schmidt would alienate "an overwhelming majority of the electorate ... who want to see the economic power of major corporations reined in."

"In reviewing your transition's disclosure of its agency review teams, we were struck and concerned by the apparent widespread influence of people with close professional ties to Google generally and more specifically Eric Schmidt, a former CEO of Google with a current multi-billion dollar stake in the company," the groups said.

The groups referenced the antitrust lawsuit filed against Google by the Department of Justice on October 20. The case argues that Google disadvantaged competitors through a network of exclusionary business deals, and is the tech giant's largest legal challenge yet.

Having Schmidt in a senior US government position "could have a chilling effect on US antimonopoly policy moving forward," they said.

The letter said appointing Schmidt would risk "fracturing a Democratic coalition" and "alienating an overwhelming majority of the electorate."

Read more: Brace yourself for the most dangerous 65 days of Trump's presidency

The groups also pointed to the news that Schmidt was reportedly obtaining citizenship in the European island, Cyprus, per Recode, allowing him to travel to the European Union and possibly reap tax benefits. Schmidt declined to comment to Recode at the time.

In light of this news, appointing Schmidt would send a "dangerous message" during a time of "historic wealth inequality," the groups said.

Schmidt has a net worth of about $15 billion and is one of the wealthiest people on the planet.

The groups also referenced a survey by the organization Demand Progress, in which more than half of people agreed Biden should refuse to appoint any individuals with ties to Big Tech companies that are being sued by the Department of Justice.

"The American people are divided on many things, but not on what they view as fundamental issues of legal and economic justice like this one," they said.

Read the original article on Business Insider

JOE BIDEN - NOW THAT I HAVE SOMEWHAT WON, THE POPULIST CRAP KAMALA AND I STAGED IS OVER!

JOE BIDEN SAYS MUCK PROGRESSIVES, I MADE MY DIRTY MONEY SERVING WALL STREET!

“Hauser also didn’t like the prevalence of Big Law talent on the Department of Justice team, which signaled to him that the Biden administration could go soft on corporate malefactors.” 

https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2020/11/joe-bidens-america-to-be-ruled-by-wall.html

“Joe Biden’s transition is absolutely stacked with tech industry players,” noted Protocol, an online publication that covers technology.”

“He was presumably referring to the two dozen agency review team officials who come from law firms like Arnold & Porter. Or to the 40 or so members of the Biden transition who are current or recent lobbyists.”

“During the summer, the American Prospect published a lengthy exposé about Biden’s foreign policy advisers’ lucrative foray into corporate America. Many are set to return to the highest echelons of official Washington.”

IVANKA TRUMP TURNS IN DADDY - 'I WON'T GO TO PRISON FOR THE ORANGE BLOB!!!"

 Trump’s conviction would seal the greatest downfall in American politics since Richard Nixon. Unlike his associates who were sentenced to prison on federal charges, Trump would not be eligible for a presidential pardon or commutation, even from himself. And while his lawyers would file every appeal they can think of, none of it would spare Trump the indignity of imprisonment. Unlike the federal court system, which often allows prisoners to remain free during the appeals process, state courts tend to waste no time in carrying out punishment. After someone is sentenced in New York City, their next stop is Rikers Island. Once there, as Trump awaited transfer to a state prison, the man who’d treated the presidency like a piggy bank would receive yet another handout at the public expense: a toothbrush and toothpaste, bedding, a towel, and a green plastic cup.

De Niro: ‘Nuts’ Giuliani Used to Prosecute the Mob — Now He Represents the Trump ‘Mob Family’

1:35

Actor Robert De Niro said Friday on ABC’s “The View” it was “nuts” that former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York prosecuted the mob and now he works for the Trump’s which De Niro called a “mob family.”

Co-host Sunny Hostin said, “I wanted to ask you about Giuliani because Rudy Giuliani is still trying to fight the results in court with ridiculous claims. Yesterday he quoted “My Cousin Vinny” in a press conference. Earlier this week, he claimed the mafia of Democrats rigged the votes for Biden. Giuliani used to prosecute actual mob bosses in the ’80s in federal court. What happened to him?”

De Niro said, “I know. I know. He’s the one who was prosecuting under the RICO Act the way I understand it, and now he’s representing a mob family. It’s crazy. It’s crazy.”

He continued, “I don’t know what happened to him. I feel bad for him.”

Hostin said, “Why do you think he would do this?”

De Niro said, “I think just for the attention, maybe desperation, maybe whatever else. That’s the only way. I can’t understand because it’s just as easy to say, ‘Look. I can’t buy into this. I can’t go along with this. It’s over. I’m out.’ He would have so much respect, and people would hire him and want to hire him, and he’s gone this other way. It’s just nuts.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

Ivanka Trump Blasts New York Fraud Investigations: ‘100% Motivated by Politics, Publicity, and Rage’

Ivanka Trump
Ross D. Franklin/AP Photo
2:15

Two fraud investigations into President Donald Trump and his businesses in New York are “100% motivated by politics, publicity, and rage,” Ivanka Trump tweeted Thursday.

“This is harassment pure and simple. This ‘inquiry’ by NYC democrats is 100% motivated by politics, publicity, and rage. They know very well that there’s nothing here and that there was no tax benefit whatsoever,” she wrote:

“These politicians are simply ruthless,” Ivanka continued.

Her tweet referenced a New York Times article that said the investigations “have expanded to include tax write-offs on millions of dollars in consulting fees, some of which appear to have gone to Ivanka Trump, according to people with knowledge of the matter.”

However, Alan Garten, general counsel for the Trump Organization, said “this is just the latest fishing expedition in an ongoing attempt to harass the company.”

“Everything was done in strict compliance with applicable law and under the advice of counsel and tax experts. All applicable taxes were paid and no party received any undue benefit,” Garten noted.

The Times article continued:

The inquiries — a criminal investigation by the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., and a civil one by the state attorney general, Letitia James — are being conducted independently. But both offices issued subpoenas to the Trump Organization in recent weeks for records related to the fees, the people said.

In December 2018, James reportedly vowed to launch a widespread probe into the president and members of his family, according to Breitbart News.

“We will use every area of the law to investigate President Trump and his business transactions and that of his family as well,” she said at the time, adding, “We want to investigate anyone in his orbit who has, in fact, violated the law.”

Despite the attorney general’s comments, Ivanka said in another tweet on Thursday that “This fishing expedition is very clearly part of a continued political vendetta”:

THIS FAMILY HAS NEVER EARNED AN HONEST DOLLAR IN THEIR PATHETIC LIVES!

Trump Is Surrounded by Criminals

https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-fall-of-donald-trump-final-days.html

“The legal ring surrounding him is collectively producing a historic indictment of his endemic corruption and criminality.” JONATHAN CHAIT


Eric Trump claims family 'lost a fortune' in pushback of pay-for-play report

 

ADAM KELSEY

Responding to a story that reported that hundreds of corporations, special interest groups and foreign governments seeking benefits patronized Trump Organization properties in recent years, the president's son argued Sunday that the groups represent a small proportion of their business and that his father has not benefited monetarily from his office.

"We've lost a fortune. My father lost a fortune running for president. He doesn't care," Eric Trump, an executive vice president with the Trump Organization, said on ABC's "This Week." "He wanted to do what was right. The last thing I can tell you Donald Trump needs in the world is this job."

The comments come a day after a New York Times story reported that President Trump "transplanted favor-seeking in Washington to his family's hotels and resorts -- and earned millions as a gatekeeper to his own administration." The article, citing the president's tax records, reports that of the hundreds of individuals and entities seeking favor, "60 customers with interests at stake before the Trump administration brought his family business nearly $12 million during the first two years of his presidency."

"Almost all saw their interests advanced, in some fashion, by Mr. Trump or his government," the news story continued.

ABC News has not viewed the president's taxes and cannot confirm the Times' reporting.

On "This Week," Eric Trump echoed his father's rhetoric calling the story "fake news." He also implied without evidence that the report -- one of several in the past two weeks concerning the president's finances -- was timed to hurt his reelection campaign.

NEW: "My father has lost a fortune," Eric Trump tells @jonkarl when pressed on a NYT report that Pres. Trump turned "his own hotels and resorts into the Beltway's new back rooms, where public and private business mix and special interests reign." https://t.co/fsCP2um0H5 pic.twitter.com/MtZLiszs2K

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) October 11, 2020

Pressed by ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl about the president's debt, which the Times reported as more than $400 million, Eric Trump characterized it as commonplace for someone with his level of wealth in the real estate industry. He also misleadingly claimed that all of the president's lenders are publicly known.

"It's in his financial disclosures," Eric Trump said, referring to the annual reports the president is required to issue under federal ethics regulations that do not list all of his creditors. President Trump has not voluntarily released his tax returns, as other past commanders-in-chief and candidates for the office have done. "You know exactly who the money's owed to … my father is worth billions of dollars, and on a proportion of his net worth, my father has very, very low leverage."

"If you own buildings, if you own real estate, you carry some debt. That's what developers do, that's what business owners do, they carry some debt," he continued. "We have a phenomenal company, but there's nothing new about that, and by the way, it's the same debt that he got elected on."

.@jonkarl: "Don't the American people have a right to know who (the president) is indebted to?"

"That's what developers do, that's what business owners do, they carry some debt, "Eric Trump says but President Trump still won't release his tax returns. https://t.co/fsCP2um0H5 pic.twitter.com/x3u8GcDpKy

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) October 11, 2020

In the interview, Eric Trump also responded to the president's refusal to participate in a virtual debate this coming week, as planned by the Commission on Presidential Debates following the president's COVID-19 diagnosis and subsequent hospitalization. The debate was canceled as a result and it is not immediately clear what format the next, and potentially final, scheduled debate will take in two weeks.

"My father wants to stand on stage with his opponent. That's how debates have been handled in America for the last 200 years, you've stood there and you've debated somebody," Eric Trump said, despite the fact that John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon debated on-camera from opposite coasts, appearing on television in a split-screen in 1960.

"My father doesn't want to do it over a glorified conference call," he continued.

Karl noted that several members of the Trump family, including Eric and his siblings, defied protocol by watching the first debate maskless. Second lady Karen Pence also appeared at this past week's vice presidential debate without a mask.

"Given the concerns now, will you commit that the Trump team will abide by those safety precautions that the commission put in place at the next debate?" Karl asked.

"I'm happy to wear a mask," Eric Trump said, going on to accuse Democratic nominee Joe Biden of backing out the debate -- another mischaracterization. It was the commission that announced the plan to hold the second event virtually, and the president who chose not to participate. The Trump campaign said the president would also be willing to attend two more debates if they were each postponed a week to allow for an in-person format, but the Biden campaign rejected the idea.

"My father wants to stand on the stage with his opponent," and "doesn't want to do it over a glorified conference call," Eric Trump tells @jonkarl when asked if the Trump campaign will decline to participate in Oct. 22 presidential debate if it's virtual. https://t.co/R7EgB0oaON pic.twitter.com/s7Vl6T9MY6

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) October 11, 2020

On Saturday, the president's physician, Dr. Sean Conley, issued a memo stating that the president "is no longer a transmission risk to others" and "the assortment of advanced diagnostic tests obtained reveal there is no longer evidence of actively replicating virus." It remains unclear whether Trump has tested negative.

The memo came hours after the president delivered an address resembling a campaign speech from the White House South Lawn. The administration called the event a "peaceful protest for law and order," which Eric Trump echoed on "This Week." The president heads to Florida Monday to restart official in-person campaign events with a rally in Sanford.

Eric Trump also noted on Sunday morning that attendees at Saturday's outdoor White House event were temperature-checked and wore masks -- the latter measure, Karl noted, a less common sight at Trump campaign rallies prior to the president's diagnosis.

As the president prepares to return to the campaign trail, Karl challenged Eric Trump about his father's rhetoric following the vice presidential debate in reference to Biden's running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif.

"Vice President Pence, when he debated Kamala Harris, said it was a privilege to be on the stage with her, recognized her history-making pick as Biden's running mate. And then the next day your father said that she was a monster," Karl said, referencing comments the president made on Fox Business Thursday. "Why? How is Kamala Harris a monster? Why did he say that?"

"Well, you know, there are a lot of stances that she takes are just -- they're mind-boggling to me," Eric Trump responded.

"But political differences are one thing. A monster? You're calling the Democratic vice presidential nominee a monster. Your father did," Karl pressed.

"You know, you're also dealing with a person who is willing to lie every single day," Eric Trump claimed, going on to misrepresent Biden and Harris' position on law enforcement funding.

Eric Trump claims family 'lost a fortune' in pushback of pay-for-play report originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

 

The prospect of fitting the orange man for an orange jumpsuit would create new problems of its own.

Lock Him Up? 

For the Republic to survive Trump’s presidency, he must be tried for his crimes. Even if that sparks a constitutional crisis of its own. JONATHAN CHAIT

Jonathan Chait

In the end, the most salient fact about Donald Trump may simply be that he is a crook. He has been defying the law since at least the early 1970s, when he battled the Department of Justice over his flagrant refusal to allow Black tenants into his father’s buildings. He has surrounded himself with mafiosimoney launderers, and assorted lowlifes. His former attorney, national security adviser, and adviser, and two of his campaign managers, have been arrested on or convicted of an array of federal crimes ranging from tax fraud to perjury to threatening witnesses. He employs the lingo of the underworld: People who cooperate with law enforcement are “flippers” and “rats”; investigators pursuing his misconduct are “dirty cops.” To him, the distinction between legal and illegal activity is merely an artificial construct enforced by sanctimonious hypocrites.

And although President Trump’s opponents have been warning Americans what will happen to their 230-year-old constitutional government if our gangster president gets another four years in office, the truth is much of the damage has already been done. An electoral defeat in November is, of course, necessary. But Trump has set off a profound crisis of democratic legitimacy that even a resounding Joe Biden victory may not completely resolve. It may not take a fully developed fascist movement to bring down the Republic. All that may be required is one well-placed criminal.

The prospect of an electorally defeated Trump, though glorious, would immediately set off a conflict between two fundamental democratic values: the rule of law and mutual toleration. The rule of law is a banal yet utterly foundational concept that the law is a set of rights and obligations, established in advance, that apply equally to everybody. It is an ideal rather than a lived reality. Black America, to take one obvious example, has never experienced equal treatment from institutions like the police and the courts. But this serves only to illustrate its essential value. The civil-rights movement has consisted in large part of fighting to extend the protection of the rule of law to Black people.

The experience of Black racial oppression shows that the absence of the rule of law is a pervasive, terrifying insecurity. A society without the rule of law is one in which the strong prey upon the weak. The small-scale version is a town where you need the local warlord or mafia boss to solve any problem or dispute; the nation-state version is Vladimir Putin’s Russia, where the mafia is the government and bribery is endemic.

Mutual toleration means that political opponents must accept the legitimacy and legality of their opponents. If elected leaders can send their opponents to prison and otherwise discredit them, then leaders are afraid to relinquish power lest they be imprisoned themselves. The criminalization of politics is a kind of toxin that breaks down the cooperation required to sustain a democracy. This, along with the misogyny, was what made Trump’s embrace of “Lock her up!” so terrifying in 2016. He was already using the threat of imprisoning opponents as a political-campaign tool.

If the government is run by lawbreakers, though, the state faces a dilemma: Either the principle of equal treatment under the law or the tradition of a peaceful transition of power will be sacrificed. It’s hard to imagine any outcome under which the rule of law survives Trump unscathed.

One of the most corrosive effects of Trumpism upon the political culture has been to detach the law from any behavioral definition and to attach it to political identity. As Trump likes to say, “The other side is where there are crimes.” He has trained his supporters to understand this statement as a syllogism: If Trump’s opponents are doing something, it’s a crime; if Trump and his allies are doing it, it isn’t. The chants, which applied enough pressure to force James Comey to announce a reinvestigation of Hillary Clinton in October 2016, simply to protect the FBI from being delegitimized by Republicans after an expected Clinton victory, showed how the field had been sown for Trump even before he took office.

It is because Trump views the law as a morally empty category, a weapon for the powerful to use against their enemies, that he has spent his presidency calling for the prosecution and/or imprisonment of a constantly growing list of adversaries: Joe Biden and Barack Obama (for “spying” and “treason”), House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff (for paraphrasing Trump’s Ukraine phone call in a speech), John Kerry (for allegedly violating the Logan Act), John Bolton (for writing a tell-all book), Joe Scarborough (for the death of a former staffer), Nancy Pelosi (for tearing up his State of the Union Address), and social-media firms (for having too many liberals). Trump has alleged a variety of crimes against at least four former FBI officials and three Obama-era national-security officials.

Trump has eagerly seized upon the sporadic riots and looting that followed George Floyd’s murder, but no actual violence is required for him to equate his opposition in general with illegal subversion of the state. “You don’t hand matches to an arsonist, and you don’t give power to an angry, left-wing mob,” he said in 2018. “And that’s what the Democrats are becoming.” Just as the term fake news used to describe deliberately false stories written by pseudo-journalists but was repurposed by Trump as an insult for very real reporting about his administration, crimes has ceased to denote violations of written law and become instead a catchall description for any anti-Trump activity.

Even though it is staring us in the face every day — or perhaps for that reason — we have failed to grasp how profoundly Trump has undermined the rule of law and how irreversible the damage may be. His contempt for the law is not merely incidental. He never put himself forward as a straight arrow. As a first-time major-party candidate, he depicted his history of dealing with politicians as a sequence of successful bribes. He spent years railing against the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a law banning bribes of foreign officials, and tried to weaken its enforcement as president, reportedly complaining, “It’s just so unfair that American companies aren’t allowed to pay bribes to get business overseas.” When he sought to collect a portion of the fee for brokering the sale of TikTok, Trump cited the long-standing practice of tenants paying off landlords to get rent-controlled apartments: “It’s a little bit like the landlord-tenant. Without a lease, the tenant has nothing. So they pay what’s called key money, or they pay something.” His vision of the good society is one in which powerful businessmen grease palms to get things done.

Two years ago, the New York Times, using documents supplied by his niece, Mary Trump, proved that the president had engaged in widespread fraud involving a fake company and falsifying financial information to steal millions of dollars. Also that year, the federal government said he had ordered a felony by directing hush money to his former mistresses during his campaign. His business paid millions for defrauding enrollees in a fake university. And he admitted using the Trump Foundation, supposedly a charity, to funnel money to his campaign and business.

At some point, the impunity will end. The law is coming.

Unsurprisingly, an enormous number of his political aides have been charged with, or convicted of, felonies: Michael Cohen (tax fraud, lying to Congress), Paul Manafort and Rick Gates (several financial crimes), Roger Stone (obstruction, witness tampering, and lying to Congress), Michael Flynn (lying to the FBI), Steve Bannon (fraud), Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman (illegal campaign donations and falsifying statements and records), so far.

That Trump made it to 2017 without being personally convicted of a crime is itself a testament to the ineffectiveness of white-collar-criminal-law enforcement. That Trump has not been charged since taking office is owed to the privileges of being president of the United States. Because the Justice Department has a policy against charging the president with crimes, it did not indict him for the same crime Cohen went to jail for — even though Trump had ordered Cohen to commit it. The same protection held back Robert Mueller from officially describing the many actions Trump had taken to obstruct the FBI’s investigation as “obstruction of justice.” And his standing as president has allowed him to keep his tax returns out of the hands of New York prosecutors.

But at some point, the impunity will end. The law is coming.

At the moment, Trump is reportedly the subject of three investigations. Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., New York State attorney general Letitia James, and Southern District of New York acting U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss are all probing reported crimes by the Trump administration, ranging from tax fraud to embezzling funds at his suspiciously expensive inauguration, a large proportion of which was spent at his own properties. (Strauss took over after William Barr clumsily attempted to remove her boss, who had clashed with Barr over his investigations into Trump’s misconduct, but is reputed to be independent.)

Even beyond these ongoing probes, the potential for criminal liability is vast. Trump was impeached for leveraging support from Ukraine for an announcement of an investigation of Joe Biden. But the plot reportedly involved Rudy Giuliani and his clients hitting up Ukrainians for business deals, even as Giuliani was representing Trump’s agenda — which is to say, they were apparently seeking a personal payoff in addition to a political one. The Washington Post has pried loose from the Secret Service just a portion of the records of its spending at Trump properties, giving evidence of, at minimum, severe conflicts of interest.

Trump has fired and intimidated the inspectors general who monitor the executive branch for misconduct and has virtually halted all cooperation with congressional oversight. It stands to reason that turning over more rocks will reveal even more crimes. Upholding the rule of law is going to lead straight to the kind of grisly spectacle Americans associate with banana republics: the former president leaving office and going on trial.

“Usually, these kleptocracies are the ones that hang on to power most bitterly,” says Daniel Ziblatt, a professor of government at Harvard and the co-author of How Democracies Die. Trump is particularly dependent on his incumbency. His various legal appeals to keep his financial information from prosecutors have relied on his status as president, and he has used campaign funds to finance his legal defenses. Most important, he has bluntly wielded his power either to pardon his allies or to get the Justice Department to withdraw its charges as a signal of the benefit of remaining loyal.

The political climate will not easily permit a peaceful, straightforward prosecution. The maniacal Republican response to the past two Democratic administrations shows that the prospect of any real Republican cooperation is a fantasy. The fever is not going to break. So what is a post-Trump administration to do?

Biden’s position on this problem is easy enough: He will leave it up to the prosecutors. But what will the prosecutors do? The prospect of fitting the orange man for an orange jumpsuit, delicious as it may seem for MSNBC viewers (or readers of this magazine), would create new problems of its own. To begin with, it would be essential that any prosecution of Trump not only be fair and free of any political interference but be seen as fair. A prosecution that appears vindictive would serve only to confirm the politicization of the law that Trump has done so much to advance. Prosecutors in New York and the Justice Department can make every effort to apply the law neutrally, not singling out Trump for punishment, but it will be difficult to avoid the impression of banana-republicanism formed by the sequence of a Trump criminal trial following an election defeat — especially when his supporters have been primed to fight “witch hunts” for years. Want to lock up the “Lock her up!” guy? Good luck avoiding the appearance of turnabout, however legally legitimate the process.

An incoming Biden administration is going to need a peaceful transition — not least because the federal government will probably be either distributing or in the final stages of approving vaccines and treatments for a pandemic that has killed nearly 200,000 Americans and is crippling the economy. Biden will require months of some form of broad social cooperation with measures like mask wearing and vaccine uptake, all of which could easily and legally be sabotaged by a cornered Trump.

The prospect of fitting the orange man for an orange jumpsuit would create new problems of its own.

Biden has emphasized some measure of social peace as a campaign message and will be tempted to offer a pardon as a gesture of magnanimity — why not use all his partisan chits on substantive policy goals?

Perhaps the closest American analogue is Richard Nixon, whose fate was sealed by Gerald Ford’s decision to pardon. After an immediate backlash, Ford came to be seen in later decades as a statesman and was given the Profile in Courage Award by the John F. Kennedy Library a quarter-century later in recognition of what became a bipartisan consensus about the greater need for mutual toleration than the rule of law.

From the standpoint of 2020, that decision has a different cast. The president has emulated Nixon, borrowing everything from his slogan (even Nixon and his vice-president Spiro Agnew resigning in disgrace somehow did not prevent their “Law and Order” slogan from surviving them in unironic form) to his position that if the president does something, it’s not illegal. The reforms put in place after Nixon, such as establishing the offices of inspector general and walling off the attorney general from political prosecutions, are in ruins. Trump adviser Roger Stone has a massive tattoo with Nixon’s likeness on his back and revels in crookedness. Stone gave Trump a campaign back channel to the stolen Clinton emails, then openly promised not to “roll” on the boss and was duly pardoned.

Had Nixon faced prison, rather than walking away a statesman, would Stone have set out to help elect a crook to the highest office in the land? And would that president have gleefully mimicked so many of his crimes? If Trump isn’t prosecuted, what will his successors do?

To think about a society in which Trump’s gangster-state logic prevails, consider Russia. Putin is one of the richest people in the world, having amassed a net worth believed to range up to $200 billion. Obviously, one doesn’t make that kind of money honestly while spending decades in public service. Putin’s political network is honeycombed with criminals, whose impunity is a direct function of their ties to him. The way you can tell whether wealthy Russians have fallen out of favor with the regime is that they’re charged with crimes. While Americans tend to think of Putin as an autocrat, it’s more accurate to see him as the boss of a criminal syndicate that gained control of a failing state. Even in a second Trump term, America would be many steps removed from an oligarchy like Russia’s but still several steps closer than it had been a short while before.

Trump deeply admires Putin. (This is, in fact, the most innocuous explanation for the submissive devotion he gives the Russian president.) Using the tools available to him, Trump has tried to replicate a version of the Putin approach to criminal justice. He has lavishly used the pardon power to exonerate a wide array of criminals loyal to him or his party: Joe Arpaio, Scooter Libby, Dinesh D’Souza, Rod Blagojevich (who, not coincidentally, is the highest-ranking Democrat to endorse the president), and Stone. Trump promised pardons to officials who would violate the law on his behalf.

Legal scholar and Social Democrat Ernst Fraenkel fled Germany in 1938 and three years later published The Dual State: A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship. The “dual state” describes the way in which Nazi Germany continued to operate under the formal, democratic legal apparatus that had predated Hitler, while running a parallel state that violated its own laws. Legal impunity for the ruling party is the key pillar in a system that can destroy the rule of law even while retaining laws, judges, and other formal trappings of a working system.

Trump hasn’t created a dual state, but he has laid the groundwork for it, not only in his rhetorical provocations but also as a kind of legal manifesto. In a series of letters, Trump’s lawyers have argued that he enjoys almost complete immunity from investigation by law enforcement or Congress. “The President not only has unfettered statutory and Constitutional authority to terminate the FBI Director, he also has Constitutional authority to direct the Justice Department to open or close an investigation, and, of course, the power to pardon any person before, during, or after an investigation and/or conviction,” they wrote in 2017. Last year, the president and his lawyers described impeachment as “illegal,” “unconstitutional efforts to overturn the democratic process,” and “no more legitimate than the Executive Branch charging members of Congress with crimes for the lawful exercise of legislative power.” One of his lawyers, Alan Dershowitz, wrote that Trump could not be impeached even if he handed over Alaska to Russia.

Trump’s incredible claim to be both the sole arbiter of the law and beyond its reach was on vivid display at his nominating convention, a festival of televised lawbreaking. The Hatch Act, passed in 1939, prohibits using government property to promote any candidate for office. It has been observed continuously, often in exacting detail. Political scientist Matt Glassman recalled working as a staffer at the lowly Congressional Research Service, where he had to remove old political memorabilia, like a 1960 Kennedy poster and an 1884 Blaine-Logan handkerchief, lest those items be mistaken by passersby as endorsements for a living candidate.

Trump has smashed the Hatch Act to bits, to the point where he turned the White House into a stage for his party convention. It isn’t that he was simply willing to pay the price of breaking the law in order to get the best backdrop. Trump’s aides told the New York Times he “enjoyed the frustration and anger he caused by holding a political event on the South Lawn of the White House, shattering conventional norms and raising questions about ethics-law violations,” and “relished the fact that no one could do anything to stop him.” Unashamed legal impunity was itself the message.

A democracy is not only a collection of laws, and norms of behavior by political elites. It is a set of beliefs by the people. The conviction that crime pays, and that the law is a weapon of the powerful, is a poison endemic to states that have struggled to establish or to maintain democracies. If the post-election period descends into a political crisis, having all the relevant prosecutors promise immunity for Trump would be the most tempting escape valve. Yet the price of escaping the November crisis, and simply moving past Trump’s criminality by allowing him to ease off to Mar-a-Lago, is simply too high for our country to bear.

Gulag, Anne Applebaum’s 2003 history of Soviet concentration camps, argues in its conclusion that the failure to come fully to terms with the crimes of the old regime had “consequences for the formation of Russian civil society, and for the development of the rule of law … To most Russians, it now seems as if the more you collaborated in the past, the wiser you were.” This observation, written in the early years of Putin’s regime, captures a cynicism that pervades Putin’s now-almost-unchallenged autarky.

Ziblatt likewise suggested to me that Spain’s handling of the post-Franco era has soured in retrospect. In the immediate wake of Spanish democratization, letting many of Franco’s fascist collaborators walk away scot-free seemed like a masterstroke. But over time, a “growing resentment of a collusive bargain between elites” discredited the system and fueled the growth of extremism.

Before 1945, the international norm held that deposed rulers, however crooked or abusive, should be allowed exile. Kathryn Sikkink’s The Justice Cascade: How Human-Rights Prosecutions Are Changing World Politics captures the modern norm, which emphasizes the social value of transparent and fair prosecutions as a deterrent. These cases apply most often, though, to states transitioning from dictatorship to democracy. There is less precedent for what to do when a reasonably healthy democracy elevates a career criminal to the presidency.

Trump’s unique contribution to the decay of the rule of law has been to define criminality in political terms, but he has also joined a very old project in which the political right has long been engaged: associating criminality with a category of people, so that knocking over a 7-Eleven makes you a “criminal” but looting a pension fund does not. Trump’s unusual level of personal crookedness dovetails with a familiar reactionary agenda of combining permissive enforcement of white-collar crime with a crackdown on street crime — or, as Trump calls it, simply “crime.” The implicit meaning of “Law and Order” is that order is distinct from lawfulness and that some crimes create disorder while others do not.

Trump’s reversals of Obama-era police reforms and his open contempt for the law send a signal about whom the law constrains and whom it protects. The fashioning of a more equal society means sending a different message: The rule of law must bind everyone, just as it protects everyone. A world where the power of the state can be brought to bear against a person who was once its most famous symbol of wealth is one where every American will more easily imagine a future in which we are all truly equal before the law.

*This article appears in the September 14, 2020, issue of New York Magazine. Subscribe Now!

 

POLITICS 

The People v. Donald J. Trump

 

The criminal case against him is already in the works — and it could go to trial sooner than you think.

Jeff Wise

 

The defendant looked uncomfortable as he stood to testify in the shabby courtroom. Dressed in a dark suit and somber tie, he seemed aged, dimmed, his posture noticeably stooped. The past year had been a massive comedown for the 76-year-old former world leader. For decades, the bombastic onetime showman had danced his way past scores of lawsuits and blustered through a sprawl of scandals. Then he left office and was indicted for tax fraud. As a packed courtroom looked on, he read from a curled sheaf of papers. It seemed as though the once inconceivable was on the verge of coming to pass: The country’s former leader would be convicted and sent to a concrete cell.

The date was October 19, 2012. The man was Silvio Berlusconi, the longtime prime minister of Italy.

Here in the United States, we have never yet witnessed such an event. No commander-in-chief has been charged with a criminal offense, let alone faced prison time. But if Donald Trump loses the election in November, he will forfeit not only a sitting president’s presumptive immunity from prosecution but also the levers of power he has aggressively co-opted for his own protection. Considering the number of crimes he has committed, the time span over which he has committed them, and the range of jurisdictions in which his crimes have taken place, his potential legal exposure is breathtaking. More than a dozen investigations are already under way against him and his associates. Even if only one or two of them result in criminal charges, the proceedings that follow will make the O.J. Simpson trial look like an afternoon in traffic court.

It may seem unlikely that Trump will ever wind up in a criminal court. His entire life, after all, is one long testament to the power of getting away with things, a master class in criminality without consequences, even before he added presidentiality and all its privileges to his arsenal of defenses. As he himself once said, “When you’re a star, they let you do it.” But for all his advantages and all his enablers, including loyalists in the Justice Department and the federal judiciary, Trump now faces a level of legal risk unlike anything in his notoriously checkered past — and well beyond anything faced by any previous president leaving office. To assess the odds that he will end up on trial, and how the proceedings would unfold, I spoke with some of the country’s top prosecutors, defense attorneys, and legal scholars. For the past four years, they have been weighing the case against Trump: the evidence already gathered, the witnesses prepared to testify, the political and constitutional issues involved in prosecuting an ex-president. Once he leaves office, they agree, there is good reason to think Trump will face criminal charges. “It’s going to head toward prosecution, and the litigation is going to be fierce,” says Bennett Gershman, a professor of constitutional law at Pace Law School who served for a decade as a New York State prosecutor.

Here, according to the legal experts, is how Trump could become the first former president in American history to find himself on trial — and perhaps even behind bars.

You might think, given all the crimes Trump has bragged about committing during his time in office, that the primary path to prosecuting him would involve the U.S. Justice Department. If Joe Biden is sworn in as president in January, his attorney general will inherit a mountain of criminal evidence against Trump accumulated by Robert Mueller and a host of inspectors general and congressional oversight committees. After the DOJ’s incoming leadership is briefed on any sensitive matters contained in the evidence, federal prosecutors will move forward with their investigations of Trump “at the fastest pace they can,” says Mary McCord, the former acting assistant attorney general for national security.

They’ll have plenty of potential charges to choose from. Both Mueller and the Senate Intelligence Committee — a Republican-led panel — have extensively documented how Trump committed obstruction of justice (18 U.S. Code § 73), lied to investigators (18 U.S. Code § 1001), and conspired with Russian intelligence to commit an offense against the United States (18 U.S. Code § 371). All three crimes carry a maximum sentence of five years in prison — per charge. According to legal experts, federal prosecutors could be ready to indict Trump on one or more of these felonies as early as the first quarter of 2021.

But prosecuting Trump for any crimes he committed as president would face two significant and perhaps fatal hurdles. First, on his way out of office, Trump could decide to preemptively pardon himself. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he issues a broad, sweeping pardon for any U.S. citizen who was a subject, a target, or a person of interest of the Mueller investigation,” says Norm Eisen, who served as counsel to House Democrats during Trump’s impeachment. Since scholars are divided on whether a self-pardon would be constitutional, what happens next would depend almost entirely on which judge ruled on the issue. “One judge might say, ‘Sorry, presidential pardons is something the Constitution grants exclusively to the president, so I’m going to dismiss this,’ says Gershman. Another judge might say, No, the president cant pardon himself. Either way, the case would almost certainly wind up getting litigated all the way to the Supreme Court, perhaps more than once, causing a long delay.

Even if the courts ultimately ruled a self-pardon unconstitutional, another big hurdle would remain: Trump’s claims that “executive privilege” bars prosecutors from obtaining evidence of presidential misconduct. The provision has traditionally been limited to shielding discussions between presidents and their advisers from external scrutiny. But Trump has attempted to expand the protection to include pretty much anything that he or anyone in the executive branch has ever done. William Consovoy, one of Trump’s lawyers, famously argued in federal court that even if Trump gunned someone down in the street while he was president, he could not be prosecuted for it while in office. Although the courts have repeatedly ruled against such sweeping arguments, Trump will continue to claim immunity from the judicial process after he leaves office — a surefire delaying tactic. “If federal charges were ever brought, it is unlikely that a trial would be scheduled or start anytime in the foreseeable future,” says Timothy W. Hoover, president of the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. By the time any federal charges come to trial, Trump is likely to be either senile or dead. Even if he broke the law as president, the experts agree, he may well get away with it.

But federal charges aren’t the likeliest way that The People v. Donald J. Trump will play out. State laws aren’t subject to presidential pardons, and they cover a host of crimes beyond those committed in the White House. When it comes to charging a former president, state attorneys general and county prosecutors can go places a U.S. Attorney can’t.

According to legal experts, the man most likely to drag Trump into court is the district attorney for Manhattan, Cyrus Vance Jr. Its a surprising scenario, given Vances well-deserved reputation as someone who has gone easy on the rich and famous. After taking office in 2010, he sought to reduce Jeffrey Epsteins status as a sex offender, dropped an investigation into whether Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. had committed fraud in the marketing of the Trump Soho, and initially decided not to prosecute Harvey Weinstein despite solid evidence of his sex crimes. He has a reputation for being particularly cautious when it comes to going after rich people, because he knows that those are the ones who can afford the really formidable law firms,” says Victoria Bassetti, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice who served on the team of lawyers that oversaw the Senate impeachment trial of Bill Clinton. “And like most prosecutors, Vance is exceptionally protective of his win-loss rate.”

But it was Vance who stepped up when the federal case against Trump faltered. “He’s a politician,” observes Martin Sheil, a former IRS criminal investigator. “He’s got his finger up. He knows which way the wind’s blowing, and he knows the wind in New York is blowing against Trump. It’s in his political interest to join that bandwagon.”

Last year, after U.S. Attorneys in the Southern District dropped their investigation into the hush money that Trump had paid Stormy Daniels, Vance took up the case. Suspecting that l’affaire Stormy might prove to be part of a larger pattern of shady dealings, his office started digging into Trump’s finances. What Vance is investigating, according to court filings, is evidence of “extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization,” potentially involving bank fraud, tax fraud, and insurance fraud. The New York Times has detailed how Trump and his family have long falsified records to avoid taxes, and during testimony before Congress in 2019, Trump’s longtime fixer Michael Cohen stated that Trump had inflated the value of his assets to obtain a bank loan.

Crucially, all of these alleged crimes occurred before Trump took office. That means no claims of executive privilege would apply to any charges Vance might bring, and no presidential pardon could make them go away. A whole slew of potential objections and delays would be ruled out right off the bat. What’s more, the alleged offenses took place less than six years ago, within the statute of limitation for fraud in New York. Vance, in other words, is free to go after Trump not as a crooked president but as a common crook who happened to get elected president. And the fact that he has been pursuing these cases while Trump is president is a sign that he won’t be intimidated by the stature of the office after Trump leaves it.

In writing up an indictment against Trump, Vance’s team could try to string together a laundry list of offenses in hopes of presenting an overwhelming wall of guilt. But that approach, experts warn, can become confusing. “A two- or three-count indictment is easier to explain to a jury,” says Ilene Jaroslaw, a former assistant U.S. Attorney. “If they think the person had criminal intent, it doesn’t matter if it’s two counts or 20 counts, in most cases, because the sentence will be the same.”

There are two main charges that Vance is likely to pursue. The first is falsifying business records (N.Y. Penal Law § 175.10). During Cohen’s trial, federal prosecutors filed a sentencing memorandum that explained how the Trump Organization had mischaracterized hush-money payments as “legal expenses” in its bookkeeping. Under New York law, falsifying records by itself is only a misdemeanor, but if it results in the commission of another crime, it becomes a felony. And false business records frequently lead to another offense: tax fraud (N.Y. Tax Law § 1806).

If Trump cooked his books, observes Sheil, that false information would essentially “flow into the tax returns.” The first crime begets the second, making both the bookkeeper and the tax accountant liable. “Since you have several folks involved,” Sheil says, “you could either bring a conspiracy charge, maximum sentence five years, or you could charge each individual with aiding and abetting the preparation of a false tax return, with a max sentence of three years.”

To build a fraud case against Trump, Vance subpoenaed his financial records. But those records alone won’t be enough: To secure a conviction, Vance will need to convince a jury not only that Trump cheated on his taxes but that he intended to do so. “If you just have the documents, the defense will say that defendant didn’t have criminal intent,” Jaroslaw explains. “I call it the ‘I’m an idiot’ defense: ‘I made a mistake. I didn’t mean to do anything.’ Unfortunately for Trump, both Cohen and his longtime accountant, Allen Weisselberg, have already signaled their willingness to cooperate with prosecutors. “What’s great about having an accountant in the witness stand is that they can tell you about the conversation they had with the client,” Jaroslaw says.

Through appeals, Trump has managed to drag out the battle over his tax returns. The case has gone all the way to the Supreme Court, back down to the district court, and back up to the appeals court. But Trump has lost at every stage, and it appears that his appeals could be exhausted this fall. Once Vance gets the tax returns, Eisen estimates, he could be ready to indict Trump as early as the second quarter of 2021.

Sheil, for one, believes Vance may already have Trump’s financial records. It’s routine procedure, he notes, for criminal tax investigators working with the Manhattan DA to obtain personal and business tax returns that are material to their inquiry. But issuing a subpoena to Trump’s accountants may have been a way to signal to them that they could face criminal charges themselves unless they cooperate in the investigation.

Once indicted, Trump would be arraigned at New York Criminal Court, a towering Art Deco building at 100 Centre Street. Since a former president with a Secret Service detail can hardly slip away unnoticed, he would likely not be required to post bail or forfeit his passport while awaiting trial. His legal team, of course, would do everything it could to draw out the proceedings. Filing appeals has always been just another day at the office for Trump, who, by some estimates, has faced more than 4,000 lawsuits during the course of his career. But this time, his legal liability would extend to numerous other state and local jurisdictions, which will also be building cases against him. “There’s like 1,037 other things where, if anybody put what he did under a microscope, they would probably find an enormous amount of financial improprieties,” says Scott Shapiro, director of the Center for Law and Philosophy at Yale University.

Even accounting for legal delays, many experts predict that Trump would go to trial in Manhattan by 2023. The proceedings would take place at the New York State Supreme Court Building. Assuming that the judge was prepared for an endless barrage of motions and objections from Trump’s defense team, the trial might move quite quickly — no longer than a few months, according to some legal observers. And given the convictions that have been handed down against many of Trump’s top advisers, there’s reason to believe that even pro-Trump jurors can be persuaded to convict him. “The evidence was overwhelming,” concluded one MAGA supporter who served on the jury that convicted Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman. “I did not want [him] to be guilty. But he was, and no one is above the law.”

Trump’s conviction would seal the greatest downfall in American politics since Richard Nixon. Unlike his associates who were sentenced to prison on federal charges, Trump would not be eligible for a presidential pardon or commutation, even from himself. And while his lawyers would file every appeal they can think of, none of it would spare Trump the indignity of imprisonment. Unlike the federal court system, which often allows prisoners to remain free during the appeals process, state courts tend to waste no time in carrying out punishment. After someone is sentenced in New York City, their next stop is Rikers Island. Once there, as Trump awaited transfer to a state prison, the man who’d treated the presidency like a piggy bank would receive yet another handout at the public expense: a toothbrush and toothpaste, bedding, a towel, and a green plastic cup.

*This article appears in the September 14, 2020, issue of New York Magazine. Subscribe Now!