If You Can’t Do the Time, Don’t Do the Crime
Most convicted felons face consequences that may affect them for the rest of their lives such as lack of job opportunities, loss of voting rights, social alienation and general opprobrium in the community. One recently convicted felon may ride this status to a triumphant return to the White House.
The sheer ridiculousness of that statement shows just how far this country has veered from its Constitutional roots. The Founding Fathers warned against the possibility of tyranny if an outlier refused to follow the rules. But, until now, even though we have had Presidents who skirted the margins of the law, none have so flagrantly flaunted such disrespect for the dignity of the Office.
Many things about the Trump story remain strange. But it seems an especially odd way to run a Presidential campaign by, in the midst of his imminent conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records to hide a tryst with a porn star that threatened his 2016 bid for the Presidency, associating with rap stars, drug dealers, disgraced politicians and the former leader of the New York Hell’s Angels, some of whom have been charged with and, in some cases convicted of, such incidental offenses as, say, murder.
Trump maintains a contorted vision of American justice. He famously called for the execution of the “Central Park Five,” in a full page ad in the New York Times for a rape they did not commit. When DNA evidence definitively cleared them, he insisted they were guilty based on their coerced confessions.
While he and his Republican sycophants insist that his trial and conviction were politically motivated, he vows to dedicate the DOJ in his second term to prosecution of virtually all of his enemies, not least Joe Biden, while arguing before “his” Supreme Court for absolute immunity for acts committed while in office. Trump is never bothered by his contradictions even as critics quickly pointed out, in 2016, referring to his then opponent, Hillary Clinton, that an indicted person should not even be allowed to run for President.
Unsurprisingly Hillary remains on Trump’s hit list, but other prime candidates for prosecution include Attorney General Merrick Garland, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who will soon argue for prison time for the convicted felon who he successfully prosecuted. He has called for the former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, to be executed for his offer to reassure China after the events of January 6.
Perhaps the oddest Trump move is to compare himself favorably to America’s most famous gangster, Al Capone. He holds out Capone as a man who was unfairly prosecuted but was “seriously tough.” But not as tough as him since, according to Trump, Capone was only indicted once (actually six times) to Trump’s four.
The comparison to Capone is not accidental as the notorious Boss of the Chicago Outfit, despite his many heinous crimes, including orchestration of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, was once regarded as being as untouchable as Trump (but not made of teflon, which was not invented until 1938). Capone was finally nabbed for the mundane offense of tax evasion on the income he earned from bootlegging, prostitution, gambling and narcotics. Meanwhile, Trump and his solicitous minions see his convictions as mere “technicalities” based on disguising the hush money payments as “legal expenses.” Like Capone’s tax evasion, Trump’s crimes are seen as not manly enough for such a manly man.
Trump’s conviction was largely a function of his own pride and his legal team’s ineptness. He and his lawyers insisted on denying that the whole thing happened instead of using the plausible argument that even if the government’s case were true, it did not amount to a crime. The prosecutors’ novel legal theory that misdemeanors can rise to a felony if they are tied to a separate felonious act, in his case interference with an election, makes the convictions vulnerable on appeal. But admitting that the one-night stand occurred would have been too humiliating for Trump since Stormy testified that the sex was less than ordinary, potentially wounding Trump’s self-created Lothario image.
Just as Capone’s tax evasion was trivial compared to his Gangland activities, so Trump’s hush-money transgressions are nothing compared to trying to overthrow an election he lost and purloining and concealing highly sensitive government documents. But thanks to Trump’s one true talent, the ability to delay, combined with a sympathetic, Trump-appointed judge and some unfortunate indiscretions by several of the prosecutors in the other pending criminal cases against Trump, the verdict last week is likely to be the only legal reckoning Trump will face before the election.
No matter how ordinary the charges against Capone were viewed, his conviction was very real and he eventually paid the price, dying in prison of syphilis. It is unlikely that Trump will bear anything like that fate, but it is the American people who will be the real losers if the November 6 headline reads: “Convicted Felon Wins White House.” Does that sound like justice to you?
