At noon on 20 January, assuming he doesn’t have to be carried out of the White House as a trespasser, Donald Trump will make one final stroll across the South Lawn, take his seat inside Marine One, and be gone.
From that moment, Donald Trump’s rambunctious time as President of the United States will be over. But in one important aspect, the challenge presented by his presidency will have only just started – the possibility that he will face prosecution for offences committed before he took office or while in the Oval Office.
Bob Bauer, White House counsel under Barack Obama said that there’s never been a president before who’s invited so much scrutiny and that this had been an extremely eventful presidency that raised difficult questions about what happens when Donald Trump departs office.
For the past four years, Donald Trump has been shielded from legal jeopardy by a justice department memo that rules out criminal prosecution of a sitting president. But the second he boards that presidential helicopter and disappears into the horizon, all bets are off.
The Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance, is busily investigating Donald Trump’s business transactions. The focus described in court documents was extensive and prolonged criminal behaviour at the Trump Organization, including probable bank fraud.
A second major investigation by the fearsome federal prosecutors of the southern district of New York has already lead to the conviction of Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen.
He pleaded guilty to campaign finance offences relating to the hush money paid to Stormy Daniels, the adult film actor who alleged an affair with Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.
During the prosecution, Michael Cohen implicated a specific individual 1 – Trump as the mastermind behind the felony, although the investigation was technically closed last year, charges could be reviewed once Donald Trump’s effective immunity is lifted.
It all points to a momentous and fiendishly complex legal challenge, fraught with political danger for the incoming Biden administration.
Should Donald Trump be investigated and perhaps prosecuted for crimes perpetrated before and during his presidency?
Bauer said that it looks like the incoming administration will have to face some form of these issues and the Government is going to have decisions to make about how to react, given the possibility that it becomes a source of division.
And any attempt to hold Donald Trump criminally accountable in a federal prosecution would be a first in US history.
No exiting president has ever been pursued in such a way by his successor – Richard Nixon was spared the ordeal by Gerald Ford’s contentious presidential pardon.
However, populations are always being flooded with subliminal messaging and people are so exploited and their heads are too far up their butts to think.
Of course, Donald Trump and his cronies are going to continue to get away with it, they always do, but if America is to attempt to repair its global standing, then all of Donald Trump’s actions must be investigated and where necessary, prosecuted.
What Donald Trump has done to America is beyond criminal.
He thanked the uneducated at one of his many rallies and the crowd cheered him on.
He said that he was making fun of his base and they didn’t even catch on – He’s destroyed America for decades.
Regardless of who’s in power, regardless of where in the world that it is, nobody should be above the law, and as we’ve seen in the past, rogue leaders have lined their pockets and their friend’s pockets and this has to be made public.
With Donald Trump, his tax returns weren’t shown because he knew that would turn voters away.
If you have a crook, and they’re caught out, they should face justice, otherwise, it becomes just like 1930’s Germany.
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