Over the course of five decades in his rise to political and economic power, Donald Trump has been accused of numerous crimes, including but not limited to sexual assault, tax evasion, money laundering, non-payment of employees and the defrauding of tenants, customers, contractors, investors, bankers, attorneys, charities and, finally, the American people.
Not unlike the great capitalists, con men and fraudsters of the 19th century, Trump was in the right place at the right time, albeit more than a century later under very different economic conditions — that is, he was in New York real estate and Wall Street finance. He also took advantage of the era of heightened and deregulated monopoly-capitalist fraud where lawlessness and corruption were in close alignment with rampant scamming and financial entrepreneurship.
After his improbable election as president, Trump used his time in the White House to consolidate his economic and political power. He broadened his fraudulent schemes and expanded his criminal enterprise by monetizing the powers of the presidency for his own benefit, including the Trump Organization and members of his immediate family.
At the peak of his power, and even after orchestrating a failed coup, the "Houdini of organized crime" has this far managed to escape his smorgasbord of transgressions with all but a few scratches. Now with the impending and unprecedented criminal indictment of both a former president and a candidate for president, apparently to be brought forth by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, we will all become witnesses to the ways in which Trump's standard legal tactics as a civil defendant — deny, deflect and delay — will be limited in his new role as a criminal defendant.
As Joyce Vance has explained, criminal courts work on a different clock than civil courts do. That's literally true, in that "the Speedy Trial Acts puts criminal cases on a shorter fuse" and while such proceedings "can be delayed by pending motions and appeals, the prospects aren't indefinite as they can be in civil cases."
Look for Trump and his legal team to mount a broad offensive against Bragg the person and Bragg the supposed "political operative" as they try to portray any charges against Trump as having nothing do with his apparent payment of hush money to Stormy Daniels and everything to do, as the New York Times put it recently, with "a coordinated offensive by the Democratic Party against Mr. Trump, who is trying to become only the second former president to win a new term after leaving office."
Over this past weekend, Trump took to Truth Social to tell the world that he believed he would be arrested on Tuesday and urge his followers to protest and to "TAKE OUR NATION BACK!" Personally, I do not think any arrest or indictment will come until later this week (if even that soon), but time will tell.
With so many different civil and criminal lawsuits or investigations revolving around Trump, his teams of lawyers are using the various probes against him to "discover" what crossover information or evidence is out there. For example, Trump attorney Alina Habba, as the Daily Beast reports, has tried "to use the New York attorney general's case to subpoena information on other Trump investigations — including ones he many not know about."
Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.
Trump's attorneys were already caught earlier this month, as another Daily Beast report suggests, trying to manufacture trial delays by agreeing to schedules that would end up creating conflicts and delays down the road. One such federal cases involves investors who say they were misled by fraudulent promotions connected to "The Apprentice," Trump's former reality-TV franchise, and the other is the New York state attorney general's civil suit over the Trump Organization's allegedly fraudulent financial practices.
During his term as president, Trump attempted to corrupt or deconstruct various parts of the federal administrative apparatus, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Department of Justice. With the help of his third attorney general, Bill Barr, he also sought to weaponize the DOJ against his enemies and on behalf of such criminal allies as former White House adviser and Trump campaign chief Steve Bannon and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Even after all of Trump's alleged crimes, the Republican majority in the current House of Representatives remains in the former president's hip pocket. Its leaders are still doing his bidding as much as they possibly can to help him — all at the expense of the American taxpayer.
In reaction to Trump's statement on Saturday about his alleged imminent arrest, Speaker Kevin McCarthy proclaimed that he had directed House committees to investigate whether federal funds were being used for "politically motivated prosecutions," tweeting: "Here we go again — an outrageous abuse of power by a radical DA who lets violent criminals walk as he pursues political vengeance against President Trump."
How has Trump evaded prosecution for so long? He has maximized his legal and political power — and used it to fix, resist or intimidate all pressure from other political leaders and law enforcement agencies.
While Trump may not be the world's most successful economic and political outlaw, he is certainly the leading American candidate for the title. Other contenders in U.S. history would extend from industrialist Henry Clay Frick and Ponzi-scheme master Bernie Madoff to previous disgraced presidents such as James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding and Richard Nixon. None of those candidates, however, can hold a candle to Trump, who — even with the likelihood of multiple indictments before him in the near future — is still the leading contender in the 2024 Republican presidential primary race for president.
Explaining how this remarkable social reality has materialized is complicated, and beyond the scope of this commentary. Nevertheless, part of the explanation is in the very essence of the American democracy's enemy-in-chief, as captured by the New Yorker's David Remnick:
In his career as a New York real-estate shyster and tabloid denizen, then as the forty-fifth President of the United States, Trump has been the most transparent of public figures. He does little to conceal his most distinctive characteristics: his racism, misogyny, dishonesty, narcissism, incompetence, cruelty, instability, and corruption. And yet what has kept Trump afloat for so long, what has helped him evade ruin and prosecution, is perhaps his most salient quality: he is shameless. That is the never-apologize-never-explain core of him. Trump is hardly the first dishonest President, the first incurious President, the first liar. But he is the most shameless. His contrition is impossible to conceive. He is insensible to disgrace.
There's no question that Trump's shamelessness, as well as his sociopathic personality, are among the key attributes that have served him "well" over the course of his life. What has prevented Trump from evading prosecution and ruin for all these years, however, can be encapsulated in the various struggles to impeach or criminalize him. I refer to Trump's abilities to corral and maximize legal and political power, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to his mob-boss tendencies to resist, fix or intimidate not only other politicians and ordinary citizens, but also officials from law enforcement agencies such as the IRS, the SEC, the FBI and the Justice Department.
People with that much power, especially corrupt political leaders, Wall Street financiers and multinational corporate executives, often remain habitually above the law and well beyond incrimination for extended periods of time, at least until the rare occasions when they are actually held accountable for their deeds.
We will encounter a test case very soon, and not just from Alvin Bragg. In fact, I believe we will learn a great deal more about Trump's ruthlessness, power and racketeering skills when Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis finally indicts Trump, and quite likely numerous others, under her state's RICO statutes. Among the things I'm eager to learn are these:
- What a real as opposed to a fake conspiracy to commit crimes looks like.
- How the Trump-inspired conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia came together
- Why exactly Trump and his allies failed.
Should Willis' prosecution and the ensuing trial materialize as I envision them, that will surely mean the most famous RICO case in American history.
Shares