This column is being republished with permission from its original home on Substack. For more from David Rothkopf, subscribe here.
Let us start with the plain facts, please.
The president of the United States has not reached a settlement with the United States government regarding the IRS release of his files. There was no case to be settled. A judge was about to throw it out. The case they asserted existed was meritless. The president was effectively on both sides of the issue, seeking to use a fabricated claim of harm as leverage in a negotiation with himself.
Nor is an element of that settlement an agreement between the president and the Department of Justice to refrain from every prosecuting the president for any issue pertaining to his taxes, those of his family and those of their businesses.
They assert there is such an agreement. But that “agreement” is wholly illegal. Asserting that there is such an agreement, that it is enforceable, and then enforcing it is an act of self-dealing and of violating the oaths of office of acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Trump himself.
The elements reported by news outlets as “terms” of a “deal” are not either. They are crimes being committed in service of still greater crimes.
Trump and Blanche are colluding to steal taxpayer dollars, misappropriate funds in contravention of the Constitution, lie that they are seeking to address wrongs of “weaponization” of legal processes against Trump allies that did not exist, even as they are conspiring to cover up possible tax crimes and to relieve the president of his legal obligations to pay his fair share of taxes as dictated by the tax code.
With every discussion that misrepresents what is happening as even something remotely resembling normal or legitimate government activity, their crimes move closer to being a success.
With every use of terms to describe these actions as “unusual,” “unorthodox,” or “unprecedented,” the acts, the public larceny and the abuse of power involved is minimized, normalized, and blurred, making it more likely that Trump and Blanche will succeed… and should they do so, that they will seek to commit more and greater such crimes.
How do we know? Department of Justice and other agencies of the U.S. government.
Just because Trump has the audacity to commit crimes in plain sight does not mean we should minimize them or shrug them off.
Just because Trump thinks he has immunity or the power of the pardon does not mean he does. Those powers can and must be challenged. State courts can and must pursue their own rights, which exist beyond the scope of presidential powers. But those who would seek to defend the rule of law in the United States must not stop there.
The Supreme Court has noted limitations on the president’s “immunity.” While their decision was wrong and must be overturned by a new court, by congressional action or by Constitutional amendment at some point, all that will take many years—if it happens at all.
In the meantime, prosecutors and lawyers representing the public should pursue cases consistent with the Supreme Court’s assertion that presidential immunity extends only to “official” acts. Corruption of a type prohibited by the Constitution cannot, by definition, be an official act.
Furthermore, of course, the Constitution is quite explicit about what to do about presidents and high officials who abuse their powers. They must be impeached. I understand that many feel that if a conviction in the Senate is not likely, impeachments are not worth the effort.
Nonsense. The investigative phase conducted by the House can play a vital role in bringing facts to light and shaping public opinion. Remember, Trump’s first impeachment preceded his 2020 election defeat. It is impossible and, indeed, irresponsible to suggest it did not influence the election outcome.
If the damage such a process could do were not so great, why would Trump so clearly fear it and use the threat of future impeachments as a reason within the GOP caucus to pull out all the stops to ensure a win in the midterm election?
Indeed, at every juncture at which these public crimes can be challenged in courts, they should be. Because it is the right thing to do. Because bringing such cases is in itself a deterrent for future wrongdoing. Because such cases bring key facts to light.
We must stop minimizing the rampant corruption that is occurring within this administration daily.
From insider trading to the deals Trump’s sons are cutting with the U.S. and foreign governments to the sale of pardons or regulatory relief, wherever crimes are being committed, it is essential that we describe them accurately. Lumping them in with scams like Trump phones or Trump coins or Trump swag at West Palm Beach airport is not helpful, because it makes it seem as though our president is just a rogue-ish guy doing what billionaires do (as many of his supporters no doubt view all this).
The gravity of the transgressions needs to be made clearer, and words alone are not enough. That will require action. In courts nationwide. By Congress. Similarly, the serial violations by this administration of court injunctions or of laws that prohibit the president from misallocating or misappropriating funds for his pet projects—all of the wrongdoing at every level, from his ballroom to his abrogation of our treaty obligations—need to be identified, called what they are, and challenged.
I had a conversation over the weekend with several friends who are or were senior U.S. government officials. They were very loath to make Trump’s corruption a campaign issue. They felt it was a distraction from the kitchen table issues most Americans really care about.
I argued several points:
- First and foremost, they are the same issue. Trump’s corruption is tied to the behavior and sense of impunity of our billionaire and other superempowered elites who behave above the law in their efforts to gain an ever-growing, ever more inequitable piece of the pie for themselves. The root issue for average Americans is that our system is rigged. It benefits the rich and screws everyone else. It is unfair. The high price of food or gas, the fact that our nation is willing to push up those prices and spend billions to support industries and cronies close to the president, the fact that they don’t pay their fair share in taxes while crucial benefits for the most vulnerable are stripped away, the fact that they are gutting democracy to further enhance the disproportionate power of the few at the expense of the many…all these are the same issue.
- Further, this is not 2020 or 2024. Trump’s behavior has been outrageous and is getting more out of control daily. He is profoundly unpopular. He has hurt many of his core supporters with his agenda of greed, self-dealing, and helping out only his donors and Mar-a-Lago buddies. People are angry. Indeed, they are much angrier than many old-school D.C. institutionalists. They will see Biden-Garland-like “the system will take care of itself” rationales as a failure of leadership, as the repetition of a terrible series of mistakes that helped lead to where we are today.
- This is especially true of the rising generation of voters born since 1990, the new majority in American politics, who do not remember an American system that worked; who feel the American dream is a faded idea from an old Hollywood movie. A supermajority of them do not believe they will own a house. Many wonder how they will pay for healthcare or education for their kids, or how they will ever get out from underneath crushing debt. Few believe they will ever be able to retire. They do not believe all this has happened out of the blue, because of a change in the weather or because of some self-inflicted wound of their own. They believe it is because our system of vulture capitalism has been so skewed—by changing tax and campaign finance laws, by the accumulation of power by oligarchs and big corporations—that this is no longer a land of opportunity. They see private equity firms buying up housing and making it unaffordable. They see health insurers and big pharma squeezing them and fighting systems that guarantee healthcare for all, as exists in every other country. They know that a huge portion of our tax dollars go to fund a military-industrial complex that was first seen as a threat by Dwight Eisenhower sixty-five years ago. They know the “big beautiful bill” was a tax cut for the richest and a dangerous reduction in benefits for them.
- They see the Epstein class, the proponents of a Gordon Gekko theology of greed being good, and of those with the most enjoying impunity for their serial crimes and abuses, as being all one problem. Trump’s crimes, Epstein’s crimes, the rapine paths carved through our society by those embracing amoral, extra-legal, late-stage American capitalism, are all the same.
- It is impossible, therefore, for candidates to say “I will address affordability” if their first act is to look away from those who are the sources of the problem, to minimize the twisted ethos of those who pushed up prices, made real estate unaffordable, denied healthcare to all, and promoted dangerous industries from guns to fossil fuels. People rightly see Trump not just as a president but as a symbol of what has brought this country to its knees and left our rising generations wondering why their futures are less bright than those their parents or grandparents once enjoyed.
- Further, holding Trump accountable, and holding his enablers accountable, is an essential element of the structural reforms that must be the first priority in any effort to fix this country’s social and economic problems…and the political dysfunction that has fed and exacerbated them. They are not the only steps. But unless visible crimes, apparent to all, lead to fair trials and real punishments where appropriate, no one will believe we can fix the other big issues we face. Should such steps also include Supreme Court reform— increasing the size of the court, term limits, and ethics rules for the court? Yes. Should they include fixing the elements and our system that give disproportionate power to less populous states, which also happen to be mostly red states? Of course. Perhaps we should consider splitting super-populous states into smaller ones and merging less populous states together. We need to make Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia states. We need to get rid of the electoral college. We need to have major campaign finance reform that effectively repeals the insanity of Citizens United. (Personally, I believe we should hold much shorter, publicly financed campaigns for federal office.) The list goes on. There is much work to be done.
The point, however, is that it is a mistake to view Trump’s current crimes through lenses that seemed appropriate in the past. It is a mistake to think we can just turn the page without him and his cronies being held to account…because we know that doing so will just lead them to have a greater sense of impunity. It is an error to believe that we will end the era of elite impunity unless and until we end the idea that anyone, including the president, is above the law. And it is a gross misreading of the moment to believe that American voters do not recognize that Trump’s corruption, billionaire corruption, out-of-control new technologies, rape of the environment, skyrocketing healthcare costs, and the soaring cost of living are all part of the same problem.
It is not a problem that can be fixed piecemeal.
We must have the vision to address all these elements. Saving democracy and restoring a future for our children and their children requires the boldness to grapple with each of the obvious challenges we face, no matter how massive they may be, no matter that we have failed to do so in the past.
We should see Trump’s grotesque public acts of criminality not just as shocking, therefore, but as a call to action, as an opening to a new era of reform and rebirth in this country, of a recommitment to promoting and believing in the ideal of opportunity and equal protection under the law for each and every one of us.
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