We are the United States of America. When a new President comes into office, he (or she) doesn\u2019t drag the old President to jail, doesn\u2019t try them for crimes, doesn\u2019t take legal vengeance. That\u2019s the kind of thing \u201cbanana republics\u201d do, places like Brazil and Peru and Nicaragua. But not the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We don\u2019t put Presidents on trial. In fact, our own Department of Justice has a policy that doesn\u2019t allow even an indictment of a sitting President. The serving President is completely above the scope of criminal law. If they commit a crime \u2013 it\u2019s up to Congress to impeach and remove them from office. That\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 \u201cclean\u201d record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first attempt at holding a top officer of the United States accountable was early in our Constitutional history \u2013 1807. Former Vice President Aaron Burr was arrested and held. It wasn\u2019t for the murder of Alexander Hamilton back in 1804, that duel in Weehawken, New Jersey (everything\u2019s 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\u2019t go very far, and the evidence against Burr was sketchy at best. He was acquitted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We didn\u2019t even try the President of the Confederacy, the man who led a massive rebellion against the United States \u2013 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\u2019t win any votes in the South. And there was the shadowy concern \u2013 if somehow Davis wiggled out of the treason charge, what that put a cloud on the Union victory?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If convicted of treason, Davis would have been executed. That would create a martyr, another addition to the \u201cLost Cause\u201d myth. Even some of the most ardent supporters of the North wanted Davis to just \u201cgo away\u201d. One of the guarantors of his bond, Gerrit Smith, also financed John Brown\u2019s raid on Harper\u2019s Ferry. Abolitionist newspaper editor Horace Greeley was another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The United States, for good or bad, has always been a \u201cforward looking\u201d 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\u2019t look back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At least, not until now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We are a nation of precedents. Americans look back to see what\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s one issue with that:\u00a0\u00a0Trump is the current problem.\u00a0\u00a0The efforts he made to overturn the election results of 2020 continue, this time to control the election of 2024.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cStop the Steal\u201d candidates are sliding into office, from the County level to the Senate of the United States.\u00a0\u00a0The attempted coup that we are learning about through the January 6th<\/sup>\u00a0Committee\u2019s hearings, didn\u2019t stop in the middle of the night when Vice President Pence announced Joseph Robinette Biden as the next President.\u00a0\u00a0It continues today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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 \u201cTrump 2024\u201d, to the Insurrection plotters like Bannon and the fringe crazies, are still in motion. We don\u2019t have to look \u201cback\u201d, we only need look at the present, to see what the future will bring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So today we have the opportunity to determine what our Democracy will look like.\u00a0\u00a0For too many, the image of Donald Trump is the \u201cface\u201d of America; a white America, a restricted America, an oligarchy of the wealthy rather than a commonwealth for the common man.\u00a0\u00a0And that\u2019s the decision that Attorney General Merrick Garland needs to make. \u00a0\u00a0Precedence may say to leave Donald Trump alone.\u00a0\u00a0But, we are doomed to repeat the history Trump made: unless we hold him accountable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Doomed to Repeat<\/h3>\n\n\n\n