Banana Republic
We are the United States of America. When a new President comes into office, he (or she) doesn’t drag the old President to jail, doesn’t try them for crimes, doesn’t take legal vengeance. That’s the kind of thing “banana republics” do, places like Brazil and Peru and Nicaragua. But not the United States.
We don’t put Presidents on trial. In fact, our own Department of Justice has a policy that doesn’t allow even an indictment of a sitting President. The serving President is completely above the scope of criminal law. If they commit a crime – it’s up to Congress to impeach and remove them from office. That’s been tried, literally. Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, were tried by the Senate. And of course Donald Trump was tried twice. But no President has ever been convicted.
The closest we came was Richard Nixon. He was an unnamed, unindicted co-conspirator during Watergate, while President. When Congress threatened to impeach and remove him, he resigned. The Watergate Prosecutors prepared actual indictments against the former President, ready to take Nixon to trial, and perhaps prison. But his successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned him for any crimes he might have committed. Nixon walked away with a “clean” record.
Treason
The first attempt at holding a top officer of the United States accountable was early in our Constitutional history – 1807. Former Vice President Aaron Burr was arrested and held. It wasn’t for the murder of Alexander Hamilton back in 1804, that duel in Weehawken, New Jersey (everything’s legal in Jersey). Burr was indicted for treason. Allegedly he was involved in a plot to break away the midwestern part of the new United States and set up a separate country. The plot was hatched on Blennerhasset Island, on the Ohio River near Parkersburg. But it didn’t go very far, and the evidence against Burr was sketchy at best. He was acquitted.
We didn’t even try the President of the Confederacy, the man who led a massive rebellion against the United States – the Civil War. Jefferson Davis was held in prison on treason charges for almost two years. Then he was released on bond and headed to Europe. Meanwhile, the treason charges languished in the Court. There are several reasons. The judge in the case, Chief Justice Salmon Chase, still wanted to run for President. A trial of Davis wouldn’t win any votes in the South. And there was the shadowy concern – if somehow Davis wiggled out of the treason charge, what that put a cloud on the Union victory?
If convicted of treason, Davis would have been executed. That would create a martyr, another addition to the “Lost Cause” myth. Even some of the most ardent supporters of the North wanted Davis to just “go away”. One of the guarantors of his bond, Gerrit Smith, also financed John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry. Abolitionist newspaper editor Horace Greeley was another.
Eyes Front
The United States, for good or bad, has always been a “forward looking” nation. Rather than re-litigate the past, we have found ways to put it behind us. Davis and the other Confederate leaders were pardoned, and even granted posthumous citizenship rights (Lee in 1976, Davis in 1978). Nixon, the Vietnam draft dodgers, and the Reagan era Iran-Contra officials were all pardoned. President Obama refused to look into the Bush era CIA torturing. We don’t look back.
At least, not until now.
We are a nation of precedents. Americans look back to see what’s been done in the past to determine what to do today. George Washington served two terms as President, and stopped. Every other President did the same until Franklin Roosevelt. After FDR, we wrote the precedent into law in the Constitution. So it would seem obvious that whatever Donald Trump did, American precedent would be to leave it alone, let the history books deal with it, and move onto our current problems.
There’s one issue with that: Trump is the current problem. The efforts he made to overturn the election results of 2020 continue, this time to control the election of 2024. “Stop the Steal” candidates are sliding into office, from the County level to the Senate of the United States. The attempted coup that we are learning about through the January 6th Committee’s hearings, didn’t stop in the middle of the night when Vice President Pence announced Joseph Robinette Biden as the next President. It continues today.
Doomed to Repeat
The only way to protect our Constitution, our Democracy, is to rip open the scab and reveal the continuing infection of Trumpism. The depth of the plot, from the legalisms of Eastman and Navarro, to the propaganda machine “Trump 2024”, to the Insurrection plotters like Bannon and the fringe crazies, are still in motion. We don’t have to look “back”, we only need look at the present, to see what the future will bring.
So today we have the opportunity to determine what our Democracy will look like. For too many, the image of Donald Trump is the “face” of America; a white America, a restricted America, an oligarchy of the wealthy rather than a commonwealth for the common man. And that’s the decision that Attorney General Merrick Garland needs to make. Precedence may say to leave Donald Trump alone. But, we are doomed to repeat the history Trump made: unless we hold him accountable.
