If we fail to hold Donald Trump, John Eastman, and all the members of Congress who played a role in the attempted coup of January 6th, then we are basically telling all future presidents that there will be no punishment for any criminal activities in which they might engage while in office. Period. Close your eyes and imagine a future president, say a President Gaetz, forcing himself on White House staff members, making sex with him a requisite of the job. Imagine a President Cruz taking money under the table from the next Russian president in exchange for refusing to assist the next country Russia attacks. Imagine President Manchin negotiating with the coal and oil companies to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency, or … well, just let your imagination run wild for a few minutes.
Those of you who are parents … you give your kids a time out or some other humanitarian punishment when they knowingly do something wrong, yes? Why do you do this? Because you know they must learn that actions have consequences, that if you steal from a schoolmate or punch a younger kid, you will pay the price. If you lie, you will pay the price. People like Donald Trump were never disciplined and grew up thinking that they were somehow ‘special’, not accountable for their actions. When one of these people gets into a public office, they assume that it’s their private play space, that they can do anything they please because they have “the power”, they assume they are untouchable, invincible. If the courts and the Justice Department of the United States fail to charge or indict and convict Donald Trump and his co-conspirators for not only their role in the January 6th attempted coup, but the entire batch of underhanded attempts to overturn our election by subverting the Justice Department, seeking to corrupt states attorneys general and more, then they are complicit in creating the monster that will be the next person to sit at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.
There are no grey areas here, no moral equivalencies, no doubts whatsoever. Donald Trump and his minions attempted treason. They failed … this time. They, or whomever is the next president, will have learned from their mistakes and will not likely fail again. No, my friends, I am not an alarmist, not being overly dramatic … I am stating facts based on a) common sense, b) logic, and c) what I can see and hear with my own eyes and ears.
I have heard numerous legal experts opine that to charge Trump would be to go down a road fraught with obstacles. That there is no precedent for actually charging a former president for criminal activity seems to be a big stumbling block – it shouldn’t be, but apparently it is. Now, these legal experts have far more knowledge than I do about the ins and outs of the law, but I am not completely witless, and I know that he cannot be allowed to get by with his crimes. I know that NOW is the time we MUST prove to the world that NOBODY in the United States, not even the president, is above the law. Failure to do so … is simply not an option.
There is also a concern among legal scholars, and likely within the Department of Justice, that in the current polarized political environment, Trump would be seen as the ‘victim of a witch hunt’ or a political voodoo doll. Some of the legal scholars say he might have a valid defense by claiming that he lacked criminal intent because he truly believed that massive voter fraud had taken place. Bullshit. If nothing else, we have learned from various people testifying in the January 6th committee hearings that Trump was told repeatedly by every expert from then-Attorney General William Barr to various states’ Attorneys General that he spoke with, to his own lawyers and even his daughter that he lost. Period. He disregarded all but a drunken Rudy Giuliani and a cunning John Eastman not because he believed he won, but because he had a plan to stay in office by hook or by crook. And if by some remote chance, despite all the evidence, he did still believe he won, then he is seriously deranged and unfit to remain in society, let alone run for any public office.
Attorney General Merrick Garland is in a tough spot, for he’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. For the sake of this nation, for the future of our children, the future of the world as we know it, he must do the right thing!