Make Prison Cells Great Again

Let Trump's Rendezvous with Accountability Begin

Mar 12, 2023

It has finally, finally come to this.

Manhattan District Attorney (DA) Alvin Bragg, according to credible news reports, is preparing to indict former President Donald Trump. If true, it’s been a very long time coming.

Reports indicate that Bragg’s indictment, if it happens, will not be for one of the top tier crimes for which Trump is being investigated - say, like trying to overthrow the federal government after he lost the election. That’s beyond Bragg’s jurisdiction and authority.

Rather, reports indicate it will likely be for one of the more tawdry of the alleged crimes on the growing Trump docket: paying porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 in hush money right before the 2016 election to keep her mouth shut about their sex romps.

The facts of this sad and pathetic story do not seem to be in dispute. Stormy Daniels said it happened. Trump first denied then acknowledged authorizing the payments. Trump’s personal lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, has confirmed it all, under oath, and went to prison for his part in hiding the payments.

Only Trump - the teller of 30,000+ documented lies in just four years as President - denies it. He says he never had sex with that woman, and the payment he now admits he not only authorized but reimbursed Michael Cohen for making had nothing to do with the 2016 election, despite its timing.

I’ll let the DA and the courts sort all this out, but if Bragg does indict Trump it will be a very, very big deal. It will be the very first time in America’s history a former President has been criminally indicted.

Given the sheer number of other on-going criminal investigations of Trump, if Bragg does indict, he likely won’t be the last to do so and indictments on even graver matters are likely to follow.

Which raises some very serious questions America must answer:

Q1. Can a former President be indicted and tried for crimes?

Q2. Should a former President be indicted and tried for crimes?

Q3. If a former President - in this case, Trump - is indicted for crimes, how should the American people react?

Here’s my take on those questions, but first, full disclosure:

This past week a Des Moines Register Iowa Poll revealed that 80% of Iowa Republicans have a mostly or very favorable view of the twice impeached Donald Trump. I find that fact shocking, astounding, disappointing and profoundly sad.

Needless to say, I have a very different view of him. Just so you know where I stand, generally, before we turn to the questions at hand:

I am not an admirer of Donald Trump. I am thoroughly sick of him. I am disgusted by what I believe is the great damage he has already done, and continues to do, to America and our democracy. I believe he is incapable of ever changing his ways.

Yet, I think it is important that all of us - myself included - take a step back, take a deep breath, and think long term about what is best for this country. I have tried to do that.

Here’s my view:

Q1. Can a former President be indicted and tried for a crime? A case can certainly be made that an incumbent President cannot be prosecuted for a crime. The Constitution gives the House and the Senate clear authority and responsibility for reigning in a criminal or rogue President through its power of impeachment.

It’s a different matter once a President leaves office.

In 1953, freshly minted ex-President Harry Truman smiled broadly and summed it up quite well when he famously said upon leaving the White House that he had just become “Mr. Citizen” again.

Citizens are subject to the law.

In July, 2019, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, in testimony before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee about his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US election was even more direct. He said - at least twice - that while his investigation did not attempt to make a judgment about whether Trump, who was the incumbent President at the time, should be indicted, a President could be indicted for crimes committed as President once he had left office and was no longer President.

In the Stormy Daniels case, the alleged crime occurred before Trump became President, when he clearly had “Mr. Citizen” status, so the question of “can” he be indicted seems even more clear.

Yes he can.

Should a former President be indicted and tried for crimes? This is the big one. The immediate answer is that it depends. It’s dicey territory. Anti-democratic dictators and juntas around the world who routinely imprison their political opponents for violating vague “laws” often enacted or decreed for the sole purpose of imprisoning political opponents are all the evidence we need of the danger of this course.

My view is this: For “crimes” that are little more than thinly veiled extensions of on-going political disputes? No.

Actual crimes that occurred before or after their presidency? Certainly.

Crimes that were committed during their presidency that strike at the heart of of our democracy, or the survival of the federal government? Yes, absolutely. The federal government - “We the People” - have the duty and must have the right of self-protection and self-preservation.

President Gerald Ford, who succeeded a criminal President, certainly thought former Presidents could be indicted and tried for crimes. That was the whole point of his pardon of Richard Nixon. When he issued Nixon a blanket pardon for his “Watergate” crimes on September 8, 1974, he noted that Nixon could yet be indicted and if he was, he was guaranteed by the Constitution a fair trial.

That trial, which he estimated would be at least a year away, would ignite “prolonged and divisive debate” over whether Nixon should be punished beyond his resignation from the presidency, a debate that would re-open national Watergate wounds and be too much for the country to endure as it worked to recover from that scandal.

Trump, of course, did not resign. He walked. And then tried to over throw a free and fair election to stay in office.

Q3. If a former President - in this case, Trump - is indicted for crimes, how should the American people react? Let the Constitution, the laws and the judicial system do their work. The time for partisanship and political tribalism on this matter will be over at that point. Those who treasure democracy will see that. Those who do not support democracy will fan the flames of division.

There is considerable risk at this moment in our history.

But at this point, I believe the danger from NOT holding Trump accountable, of not indicting him, trying him and convicting him if the facts and the law warrant it - is greater than the risk of DOING so.

The sheer volume of his likely crimes demands that we act. The severity of his likely crimes demand it as well.

You may have noticed Trump has spawned a whole cottage industry of imitators. He has thoroughly corrupted the Republican Party, which used to be a valued and valiant part of American democracy and a defender of it.

No more.

Trump’s Republican imitators see him - or at least Trumpism and Trump style - as the path to partisan success, the roadway to their future.

They need to see that, in reality, it is a dead end that leads to nowhere.

They need to see that those who attack and seek to destroy democracy and its institutions will be held accountable under the law; that those who believe that, like kings and dictators, they are above and beyond the reach of the law, are not above the law; and that democracy will defend itself whether the threat comes from abroad or from within.

The “Case of the President and the Porn Star” may be a lowly campaign finance violation case - and really - among the least of the crimes Trump is alleged to have committed.

But it is a good place to start the work of holding him accountable. And of saving democracy.

Let’s get on with it.

Barry Piatt on Politics: Behind the Curtains” is part of the Iowa Writers Collaborative, which links some of Iowa’s best and most thoughtful writers directly with readers. The effort and the columns are reader supported. Here’s a list of the writers publishing as part of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Check them out and subscribe for delivery right to your email inbox.