After Trump, America Needs Accountability for His Corruption

[Nevilledog]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/13/opinion/trump-corruption.html

Last week, NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro asked Joe Biden whether, if elected, he could envision Donald Trump being prosecuted. Biden replied that the prosecution of a former president would be a “very, very unusual thing” and probably “not very good for democracy.” The former vice president said he would not stand in the way if the Justice Department wanted to bring a case, but when Garcia-Navarro pressed him, he suggested she was trying to bait him into a version of Trump’s threat against his 2016 opponent: “Lock her up.”

Biden’s reticence is understandable, because a president who runs the White House as a criminal syndicate creates a conundrum for liberal democracy. In a functioning democracy, losing an election should not create legal liability; there was a reason Trump’s “Lock her up” chant was so shocking.

But you can’t reinforce the rule of law by allowing it to be broken without repercussion. After four years of ever-escalating corruption and abuses of power, the United States cannot simply snap back to being the country it once was if Trump is forced to vacate the White House in January. If Biden is elected, Democrats must force a reckoning over what Trump has done to America.

Of course, a Biden victory is far from assured, and if he loses, there may be no stopping this country’s slide into a permanent state of oligarchic misrule. But right now, while there’s still hope of cauterizing Trumpism, ideas about post-Trump accountability are percolating in Democratic and activist circles.

*snip*

[SheltieLover]

1. Absolutely!

New admin had better prosecute ALL OF THEM!

[JustAnotherGen]

2. If the Justice Department

Has cause -they can do that without the President's (Biden's) permission. I've got a feeling NY state is going to nail the guy anyways.


I'm more interested in Chao, DeVos, Ivanka, Jared, etc. etc. - their personal benefit as employees of the American people.

[procon]

3. If we had a working DOJ, much of Trump's highjinx

would have been litigated straight out of the box to protect the interests and rights of the people. Since we don't, and there's always the likelihood that some other amoral, unscrupulous president will pick up where Trump left off, Congress needs to pass bills to shoe up our norms, customs and traditions, and the means to check a self serving president who is more interested in his own viability than the well being of the country and its citizens.

[abqtommy]

4. Let's not neglect bringing retribution to the reTHUGS/cultists/sPUTIN/Cambridge Analytica,

Wikileaks, Nigel Farage and other Brits who have enabled tRUMP... There's LOTS of room at Gitmo.