Impeachment Aftermath – Trump’s Most Dangerous Legal Problems May Still be Ahead of Him
Trump’s impeachment trial was mercifully brief. The House Managers put in a masterful case where they created a timeline involving video, tweets, and snippets of statements made by witnesses, which proved the charges beyond any reasonable doubt. But truth be told, the House Managers never really had a chance because they were required to persuade 67 Senators and only seven Republican Senators were courageous enough to risk the wrath of the right-wing, and vote to convict. Media reports indicated that many of the Republican Senators refused to even act like they were paying attention to the trial, and three of the Senators who were also jurors, on at least two occasions during the trial, openly met and coached President Trump’s lawyers.
So as of now, former President Trump dodged a fatal legal bullet on at least three occasions: first, with the exhaustive but obtuse Mueller Report where he was not criminally charged or indicted; second, with the Ukrainian scandal where he was impeached but not convicted; and finally, with the insurrection of January 6, 2021, resulting in the death of at least five people, where he was impeached and the Senate voted 57 to 43 to convict him – 10 votes short of the Constitutional prerequisite.
In the wake of the impeachment, Trump still faces serious criminal charges. Ironically, it was his own lawyer, Bruce Castor, who during the impeachment trial argued that an impeachment of a President who had already left office would be unconstitutional, but a criminal indictment for these charges would be a viable alternative (I hope he cashed his check fast after that argument). More significantly, the Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, who voted to acquit on the impeachment charge for “constitutional reasons,” excoriated Trump as being morally and practically responsible for the events of January 6 and suggested that criminal charges were still available against Trump for anything that is not barred by the statute of limitations. In this statement he virtually invited a criminal investigation.
The first area where Trump faces significant criminal exposure is in the State of New York. Both the Attorney General of New York State and the Manhattan District Attorney are investigating financial crimes where Trump or members of his business organization might be complicit. It is reported that criminal tax violations and fraud are two of the areas of investigation and, if there is a fraud charge, money laundering charges may not be far behind.
There also appears to be a serious investigation of Trump’s post-election attempt to pressure Georgia Election Officials to change the state’s ballot certification. Beyond the shocking phone call where Trump called Raffensperger in early January and asked him to find over 11,000 votes to change the election outcome in Georgia, an investigative grand jury can subpoena witnesses or take statements from any person or official in Georgia contacted by Trump or his supporters to require them to repeat under oath the exact conversations and pressure tactics. I would not be surprised if what we knew about the pressure tactics was just the tip of the iceberg, and any witnesses brought before a grand jury will be required to testify under oath.
However, the mother of all investigations and Trump’s worst nightmare would be an investigation by the FBI and the Department of Justice of Trump’s attempts to steal the election by interfering with the electoral process in a fraudulent way. The prosecution’s theory might involve charges such as conspiracy to commit sedition or conspiracy to commit election fraud, and the duration of the conspiracy investigated would run from election day in 2020 to January 6, 2021. Hence, the Trump speech on January 6 would not be the linchpin of the prosecution case, but only the last overt act of the conspiracy to fraudulently overturn the election.
The House Managers did a remarkable job in the impeachment trial, but they had very limited investigative ability. On the other hand, if the Department of Justice decides that it is in the public interest not to walk away from this attempted coup by Trump, they have investigative tools and resources to drill down and produce far more evidence:
- They could interview members of the State Legislature in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia who were contacted and pressured by Trump not to certify the election returns and memorialize anything said by Trump and/or his supporters; many of these contacts might include reckless or desperate statements in an attempt to stop the certification of the election.
- They could attempt to interview, in the presence of counsel, all of the insurrectionists who have presently been charged and are being held without bail for the crimes committed on January 6. Since many of the people face serious jail time because of their activities and the physical and/or property damage done at the Capitol, some of them may be willing to cut a deal and become cooperating witnesses. The critical question would be: did Trump and his supporters know in advance that certain right-wing groups were going to storm the Capitol and physically interfere with the processing of the electoral votes. If there is credible evidence that Trump and his henchmen knew what was going to happen – storming and breaking into the Capitol – and encouraged and incited it, this would be “game, set and match” for a powerful criminal case. In this regard, text messages, emails, Facebook and Messenger, and other social media could present devastating evidence on this issue.
Soon to be confirmed Attorney General Merrick Garland may decide that an investigation of this breadth and scope would be too time consuming, too expensive, and too divisive for an already divided country. I would not agree with that conclusion, but I recognize reasonable people can balance the competing factors in different ways.
To my mind, what Trump attempted to do was so morally corrupt and historically unprecedented that it cannot be ignored. One other interesting thought, if an indictment is ever returned in any jurisdiction in our country, I doubt that any juror will be meeting with defense counsel during trial and coaching the defense on how to proceed!
Celebrated defense attorney Joe Hayden is InsiderNJ’s legal counsel.
Joe has clearly been bitten and fully infected by the obsession with former President Trump and what is clearly his political base that has become more resolute in support of him because of all the efforts against his administration from its start, including this most recent impeachment attempt. In a real life nightmare for his opponents, they are seeing a re-enactment of Disney’s “The Sorcerers Apprentice”, where every attempt to demolish the “possessed” broom just multiplies the army of brooms. The now ongoing storm events that have pushed much of the Southwest to include 14 states in rolling and even full blackouts, have laid bare the bleak future of reality if we allow the “Green New Deal” of decoupling from a strong energy baseload and commitment to a return to advanced nuclear and fossil fuels, in favor of a “natural” use of solar and wind, that can be swept aside by just a momentary jostling of a change in the weather. It is interesting to note that the nuclear powered voyager I and voyager II spacecraft, more than 50 years after launch have entered inter-stellar space and continue to function uninterrupted, while using using solar and wind “Green New Deal” technology, we are plunged into darkness. In abandoning the “New Frontier” thinking of former Presidents like John F. Kennedy who envisioned using government funding for landing on and staying on the moon, Mars, and “exploring the universe”, in favor of the “limits to growth”, that we would seal the fate of mankind to the cold fate of the limit of his own mortality.
Texas Governor Abbott Slams Green New Deal As ‘Deadly’; AOC, MediaTake Umbrage
Feb. 17 (EIRNS)—Interviewed on Fox News’ “Hannity” show last night, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott warned that the Green New Deal will have “deadly” consequences for the state, given the disaster it is experiencing now because of reliance on renewables, such as wind and solar. “This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America,” he said. “Texas is blessed with multiple sources of energy such as natural gas and nuclear, as well as solar and wind,” the governor said. “Our wind and our solar got shut down and they were collectively more than 10% of our power grid. And that thrust Texas into this situation” where it is lacking power statewide.
Abbott’s remarks provoked a hysterical response from Miss Green Deal herself, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), and assorted liberal media that took umbrage that Abbott dared to make such a statement. AOC immediately tweeted “the infrastructure failures in Texas are quite literally what happens when you don’t pursue the Green New Deal.” When there are “climate deniers” in office, she charged, this is what happens. The Washington Post, New York Times, MSNBC and the Texas Democratic Party were bowled over that Abbott could make such a “false” assertion. In a Feb. 15 statement, the Democratic Party complained that “if we had a governor open to alternative sources of energy,” the state would not be in such a mess.