America is going to have its next Trumpcircus

Trump’s Chaos and His Political Persequences: Implications for the 2019 Midterm Elections and the 2024 Presidential Race

Former President Donald Trump and his movement are posing new challenges to accountability, free elections and the rule of law, ushering in a fresh period of political turmoil.

Trump dropped his clearest hint yet Saturday of a new White House run at a moment when he’s on a new collision course with the Biden administration, the courts and facts.

After losing his reelection in 2020, Trump’s confrontations have vaulted him back into the center of US politics. In a nation where there is deep division, it is probable to deepen the divide. And Trump’s return to the spotlight probably means next month’s midterm elections and the early stages of the 2024 presidential race will be rocked by his characteristic chaos.

Liz Cheney, a member of the committee and a Republican vice chair, has argued that they want to damage Trump’s political hopes and have been doing so for a long time.

Those controversies also show that given the open legal and political loops involving the ex-President, a potential 2024 presidential campaign rooted in his claims of political persecution could create even more upheaval than his four years in office.

The coming political period is probably going to mostly be about the past of the ex-president, as Democratic and Republicans have different policies on the economy, abortion, foreign policy and crime.

Trump’s men and women are also stepping up their activity. His political guru Steve Bannon, whose own grassroots movement is seeking to infiltrate school boards and local election machinery, is vowing to expose the Biden “regime” in an appeal against a prison sentence handed down last week for defying a congressional subpoena. The Supreme Court is being urged by Lindsey Graham to block an attempt to force him to testify in regards to Trump’s electionstealing effort.

Democrats and New Yorkers are raising questions about the election system: The case of the ex-President, John Lake, is it likely to be politically sensitive?

In Arizona, one of the ex-President’s favorite candidates, GOP gubernatorial hopeful Kari Lake – a serial spreader of voter fraud falsehoods – is again raising doubts about the election system. “I’m afraid that it probably is not going to be completely fair,” Lake told AZTV7 on Sunday.

One of the most powerful pro-Trump Republicans, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, the party’s number three leader in the House, told the New York Post last week that impeachment of Biden was “on the table.” Nancy Mace told Jake Tapper on CNN that she didn’t want to see impeachment proceedings against Trump after he was impeached twice. She was against the process being weaponized. But when asked whether Biden had committed impeachable offenses, she said: “That is something that would have to be investigated.”

An already pro-Trump Republican presence in Washington is likely to expand after the midterms. Scores of Trump-endorsed candidates are running on a platform of his 2020 election fraud falsehoods, raising questions over whether they will accept results should they lose their races in just over two weeks.

On another politically sensitive front, the Trump Organization’s criminal tax fraud and grandy larceny trial begins in Manhattan on Monday. The trial could have an impact on his business empire and prompt fresh claims from him that he is being punished for political reasons, which could inject new politics into the election season. New York’s AttorneyGeneral Letitia James is trying to recover $250 million from Donald Trump, three of his adult children and the Trump Organization for their alleged involvement in tax and insurance fraud.

Democrats tried to get Trump back in the news. President Joe Biden likened the members of MAGA to terrorists and some campaigns warned suburban voters pro-Trump candidates were a danger to democracy.

The Jonta-Smith Subpoena Committee and the State of the Art: Defending a Non-Circumstellar Republican Presidential Candidate

But raging inflation and spikes in gasoline prices appear to be a far more potent concern before voters head to the polls, which could spell bad news for the party in power in Washington.

The former President said at a rally in Texas that he’ll probably have to run for president again.

“It may take multiple days, and it will be done with a level of rigor and discipline and seriousness that it deserves,” Cheney told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

The first debate against Joe Biden would not be the one where he would face the circus and food fight. This is a far too serious set of issues.”

Trump offered a glimpse of how he might use an appearance before the committee to create a political extravaganza after the panel announced it would send out the subpoena. He made a lot of false claims in a letter, and lashed out at the panel, accusing them of being very partisan and using their power to destroy the lives of many hard-working Americans.

Although the committee’s days are numbered, its work may live on. Prosecutors can use the testimony and evidence that the committee has unearthed in one of Smith’s probes, looking at events surrounding January 6. Once the final report is released, the panel is expected to start releasing transcripts from more than 1,000 interviews it conducted.

The prospect of video testimony over an intense period of days or hours is likely to be unappealing to the former President because it would be harder for him to dictate the terms of the exchanges and control how his testimony might be used.

It could all become an academic. Given the possibility of a Trump legal challenge to the subpoena, the issue could drag on for months and become moot since a possible new Republican House majority would likely sweep the January 6 committee away as one of its first acts.

If there is evidence a crime was committed, Garland would face a dilemma over whether the national interest lay in implementing the law to its full extent or whether the consequences of prosecuting a former commander in chief in a fractious political atmosphere could tear the country apart.

A decision to charge an ex-president running for a non-consecutive second White House term would undoubtedly cause a firestorm. But sparing him from accountability if there’s evidence of a crime would send a damaging signal to future presidents with strongman instincts.

The January 6 committee’s expected move to formally ask DOJ to prosecute Trump for his role in the Capitol insurrection will make history regardless of the charges being brought.

The conclusion of the committee’s work marks a pivot in history when Americans were faced with a choice about whether they wanted to live in a country where a commander in charge tried to overrule the voice of the people.

The committee is looking at three potential and rarely tried criminal charges against the former president, including insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the federal government, sources told CNN last week. A committee has weighed referrals and other action against Trump allies, including a former Justice Department official and an attorney who were involved in a fake electors scheme. Republican lawmakers who ignore committee subpoenas are among the possible ethics and legal sanctions to be considered by the panel.

The panel is expected to be wiped out next month by an incoming Republican House majority featuring scores of lawmakers who voted not to certify the last presidential election and who still whitewash that day of infamy nearly two years later.

But before then, the panel is expected to release its final report on Wednesday. The ex president may be embarrassed by the Ways and Means Committee, which is considering what to do with his tax returns, when it meets on Tuesday.

The committee’s televised hearings and the summary released Monday paint a devastating picture of Trump’s assault on the constitutional order and the previously unbroken peaceful transfers of power from one president to the next – the essence of American democracy.

A Capitol Police officer told how she had slipped on spilled blood during the melee caused when the ex-president’s mob smashed its way into the Capitol. The mother and daughter worked as election workers in Georgia, and they talked about how they received racist threats after Giuliani accused them of vote stealing. The speaker of the Arizona state House testified that Trump’s calls for him to interfere with the election were “foreign to my very being.”

Often, it was Republicans – some who were with Trump in the West Wing on January 6 – who courageously testified about his assault on the Constitution, including Cassidy Hutchinson. It was unpatriotic, according to the ex-aide to the White House chief of staff. It was un-American. We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie.”

If the DOJ indicts Trump, it will most likely shrink the executive branch back to a smaller and more accountable roots as we know it. It will affirm a long history of rule of law, and it will prevent a repeat of the most destructive presidential actions in recent years.

Furthermore, the committee contended in its hearings that Trump also helped to plot a nefarious scheme to use fake electors to subvert the election in Congress. After the failed efforts, the committee argued that Trump incited a vicious attack on the Capitol and called a mob to Washington. Then, committee members argued, his inaction as the violence raged amounted to desecrating his sworn duty to protect Congress, the Constitution and the rule of law.

The person tried to pressure the state to find votes that didn’t exist. This is someone who tried to interfere with a joint session, even inciting a mob to attack the Capitol,” Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee and a member of the January 6 committee, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. I don’t know what it is if that is not a crime.

Do We Really Care about Donald Trump’s 2024 Campaign? Rep. Kinzinger Revisited after the January 6 Attack as a Demonstration

Will an impression that Trump is being hounded by any referrals nearly two years after he left office help rally Republicans to his misfiring 2024 campaign?

And do Americans as a whole, at a time of national strain amid high inflation and the aftermath of a once-in-a-century pandemic, really care about events that rattled US democracy nearly two years ago?

At one of the hearings, Cheney said that every American should consider it. “Can a president who is willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of January 6 ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?”

The American people rejected a number of Trump’s candidates who had amplified his false claims about election fraud in order to protect their democracy.

It is impossible to quantify how the committee’s work affected voters in November. But it kept evidence of Trump’s insurrection in the news all this year, even as the ex-president launched a new campaign seen by many observers as a way to cast the probes into his conduct as politically motivated persecution. This is especially valuable as some pro-Trump Republicans, like Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, escalate their attempts to distort what happened in the unprecedented attack on the Capitol.

“This is a massive investigation that the committee has undertook. Huge amounts of evidence, a huge amount of witnesses being identified,” former federal prosecutor Shan Wu told CNN’s Pamela Brown on “CNN Newsroom” on Saturday.

“I think it’s the detail that accompanies the referrals themselves and the report that will give a roadmap to DOJ. DOJ has been kind of late to this party and they are playing catch-up but that detail could be very helpful to them and will put a lot of pressure on them as well.”

Future generations are likely to be able to evaluate the determination of the panel members and the bravery of witnesses who told the truth in order to save democracy.

GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who, like Cheney, served on the committee in defiance of his party and will not be returning to Congress, explained his actions in seeking to hold Trump to account in his retirement speech on the House floor last week.

We live in a world where a lie is Trump’s truth, and democracy is being challenged by authoritarianism, said the Illinois Republican.

“If we, America’s elected leaders, do not search within ourselves for a way out, I fear that this great experiment will fall into the ash heap of history.”

The Mack Brown Endowed Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin has been held by a teacher in the History Department. The author and editor of eleven books, most recently was “Civil War By Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy.” He is co-hosting the show, “This is Democracy.” The views expressed here is his own. Read others’ opinions on CNN.

The Founding Fathers of the United States: A Case Study of a Law-Violating Vice President, Spiro Agnew, and Alexander Hamilton

The founders of our republic would approve. The oath of office that the president has to take is included in the executive branch of the US government. The president is required to preserve, protect and defend the highest law of the land.

The founders did not anticipate a man of Trump’s destructiveness, but they set up a system to hold leaders accountable. Prosecuting law-breaking by elected officials affirms that they are equal to other citizens, with the same duties and limitations. An example can be set and law-abiding behavior promoted.

The president performs his duties, so it’s not easy to try him for legal violations because there’s not much judicial access to confidential information. The Constitution assumes the president will be held accountable for any crimes even if he waits until he leaves office. Impeachment and removal from office are political responses to misconduct, but they do not preclude other forms of legal accountability.

A leader who is charged for wrongdoing isn’t just sand in the gears of democracy; it puts a stop to future leaders and reassures a nation that every single person is above the law.

Over the course of two centuries, a number of presidents and vice president have been accused of criminal activity. Alexander Hamilton was killed in a swordplay by the Vice President, and he was indicted in New York and New Jersey. The United States was attacked in 1807 by an insurrection started by Burr after he left office.

In 1973, Vice President Spiro Agnew pleaded guilty to a felony charge for tax evasion, after trying to claim that he and the president were immune from such prosecution. Agnew’s immunity was denied by the federal courts.

Nixon largely retreated from the public eye, as did Agnew and Burr. It wasn’t necessary to prosecute former executive officials to prevent them from committing more crimes. Nixon’s pardon, in particular, remained controversial, but it did not threaten the security of American democracy.

Trump’s 21-year campaign against the 2021 January 6 attack on the US Capitol has not been triggered by a prosecuted

It can’t be said for Trump. He tried to overturn the 2020 election using the office of the presidency. He laid the groundwork for the violent January 6, 2021, attack on Congress to prevent the certification of the new president. He also took classified documents and then refused to return them under subpoena. The January 6 committee investigation in Congress substantiated the allegations.

In the event that DOJ agrees with one of the lesser charges, the political earthquake caused by a prosecution might not be much different from if Smith believed Trump had aided an insurrection. America has never seen a situation in which a president’s administration indicted someone for trying to topple him. And of course, if no case is made over January 6, Trump is also facing the possibility of charges in another Justice Department investigation – into his hoarding of classified material at his Mar-a-Lago resort after he left office.

Unlike Nixon, Trump has not retreated or changed his behavior since leaving office. He wants the Constitution and election laws to be repealed so that he can return to power. He has praised those who attended the January 6 rally preceding the attack on the US Capitol. He asserts that he has the right to seize government property and declassify confidential documents even though he doesn’t think about it. Since leaving the White House for Mar-a-Lago, Trump has only grown in his penchant for breaking rule after rule.

The FBI’s Comets: Donald Trump and the Mueller-Russia Insight into the January 6 Crimes Observed by the House of Representatives

It is important that high-profile crimes be prosecuted in order to prevent them from sowing seeds of doubt about democracy. Power can corrupt leaders, so punishment is the main deterrent to abuse. Throughout its history, the United States has benefited from prevention of the most extreme corruption, allowing American institutions to develop in more law-abiding ways than in many other countries.

When it came to criminal referrals, the committee members said that the system of justice was not like the one where foot soldiers go to jail and get a free pass.

The most urgent framing of a perennial question about Trump’s career in politics is, ” Will he ever face accountability for his rule breaking?” The question is especially acute given that the norm crushed this time almost toppled US democracy.

The issue of accountability gets to the core of Raskin’s comment about foot soldiers – since many of those who were in the mob that trashed the Capitol have been convicted and jailed already. Since becoming the president, Trump has mostly avoided paying political or legal prices as an example of a ringleader who skips past judgement. Former special counsel Robert Mueller, for example, unearthed a trove of information apparently showing Trump obstructed the Russia investigation but decided not to make a finding that the then-president committed crimes. Trump was impeached twice, but most Republicans in the Senate found no reason to convict him.

Specifically, the panel said Trump should be charged with giving aid or comfort to an insurrection, obstructing an official proceeding, defrauding the US and making false statements. In an executive summary of its forthcoming final report, the committee argued: “The central cause of January 6 was one man, former President Donald Trump. … None of the events of January 6 would have happened without him.”

The Department of Justice has an investigation into the events surrounding the insurrection and will have to decide whether the case stands up in a court of law.

“The Justice Department has to go so much further on every single one of these people who was touched and interviewed and seen by the committee in any way,” former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe said on CNN on Monday.

CNN legal analyst Elie Honig said that Trump’s lawyers would “go through every word of this, that is their job, that is their right. They are going to look for any inconsistencies, they are going to look for any basis to attack the potential witnesses against them, preferably in court. Defense lawyers do that.

One particular complication for the Justice Department is that the nature of the insurrection and the involvement of a former president makes this an unprecedented case. A good defense team could seek to puncture a prosecution by reframing Trump’s true intent and muddying the question of what he honestly believed about whether or not there was fraud in the 2020 election. They could say he was exercising his right to free speech in telling his supporters to fight. Special counsel Jack Smith and Garland would have to satisfy themselves before laying charges that there was a substantial likelihood of obtaining a conviction if they decided to prosecute, after considering the likely thrust of Trump’s defense.

The most serious referral might come up against a First Amendment defense because it accuses the president of giving aid and comfort to an insurrection.

The Department had to show that the president was inciting imminent lawless action with his comments. In other words, they’d actually have to prove he intended for a mob to engage in violent activity. That would be a hurdle to prosecuting him under that charge,” Rosenstein said.

It is unlikely that prosecutors at the DOJ will be influenced by the opinion of the select committee, albeit one that is backed up by a mountain of evidence, that the former president should be indicted. The panel has a lot of testimony and documents and prosecutors want to get their hands on them so that they can conduct their investigation.

With the DOJ already facing the enormous pressure of investigating Trump, which escalated when he declared his 2024 bid last month, it’s hard to say that Monday’s events will add to the burden. Even if Garland ignores multiple referrals he will make Democrats angry, because they already think the department has been slow to pursue Trump.

One thing is certain. The DOJ is in a race. With the 2024 campaign season underway and given the time it takes to mount a prosecution, Smith doesn’t have the luxury of years. The reappearance of two ex-White House counsels in front of the grand jury may be proof that his investigations are heating up.

One way that the committee’s graphic depiction of Trump’s aberrant behavior could help Smith is by preparing the public – at least the portion that does not simply defend Trump whatever he does – for the grave possibility that a former president could go on trial. Attempted coups are, after all, more akin to fragile developing world democracies and dictatorships.

“No man who would behave that way at that moment in time can ever serve in any position of authority in our nation again. He is unfit for any office,” the Wyoming Republican said on Monday.

The committee was considering the past when making these referrals. The Representative talked about Samuel Cheney, her great-great-grandfather, who was a member of the Ohio Infantry during the Civil War. After the war, he marched with his fellow soldiers in the Grand Review of the Armies, passing President Andrew Johnson in the reviewing stand. Johnson, the 17th president of the United States, would soon be impeached. Like Donald Trump. He was found not guilty of the same charges as Donald Trump.

State and federal criminal charges against Boris Johnson and Grant in the Stormy Daniels investigation: 15 years of a decade of fines for obstruction of justice

The election of 1868 saw Grant win the election and Johnson return to Tennessee to plot his comeback. It wouldn’t be easy since he possessed a talent for unifying moderate and radical Republicans with Democrats and former secessionists and many hated him and now want nothing to do with him. But it wasn’t illegal.

There’s clear evidence that the monkey of Jaworski’s day is alive and well: A new book from the legal pundit and former prosecutor Elie Honig reports that federal prosecutors in New York considered bringing charges against Mr. Trump after he left office regarding his role in the Stormy Daniels cover-up. Mr. Honig writes that the indictment left no doubt that Mr. Trump was a beneficiary of campaign finance crime. He was the driving force behind the scheme, and likely criminally liable for it.”

But those prosecutors ultimately demurred, feeling that prosecuting the former president was best left for more serious charges than campaign finance violations. (Perhaps now Mr. Bragg will pick up where they left off.)

Similarly, the special counsel Robert Mueller documented and collected evidence around possible obstruction of justice by Mr. Trump while in office, and the Mueller report states that this evidence prevented investigators “from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred.” Yet no prosecutor has sought to pursue this material now that he is out of office. Everyone is afraid to make the first move because of the precedent set by Nixon. Yet other democracies have been willing to bring current and former leaders to justice, including France, Israel and South Korea. In January, the British police fined Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for not wearing a seatbelt, and his predecessor Boris Johnson was fined for hosting parties that violated the country’s Covid lockdown rules. What better way to make clear the fundamental principle that laws apply to everyone than to bring a minor charge against a powerful figure?

We’re able to prosecute state governors. Governors from Ohio, Connecticut, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Alabama have been brought up on federal criminal charges in the last fifteen years. More than a dozen members of Congress have faced criminal charges in the last decade, including the former House speaker Dennis Hastert. Democracy is chugging along just fine.

The commander in chief is undoubtedly a unique case, and the bar and evidence necessary to prosecute a former president should be high. Mr. Trump was implicated in the case of Stormy Daniels. If he’d been anyone else, he almost certainly would have faced felony charges. How is it better for our democracy for him to escape a charge that prosecutors would levy against anyone else?

Arick Weinstein: Axios View of the Charges that Left a President of State with a Bad Apple in the White House

Editor’s Note: Arick is a renowned television producer and former senior media adviser to a New York Mayor. He advises corporate clients on communications and political strategies. Follow him on Twitter @ArickWierson. Read more opinion on CNN.

Over the past week, some commentators have appeared gobsmacked by the unprecedented nature of this turn of events for the twice-impeached former president.

Since 2000, in over 75 countries around the world, according to Axios research, heads of state who left office have been prosecuted or jailed — including in vibrant and strong democracies like Israel, France and South Korea.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been defending himself against charges of fraud, breach of trust and taking bribes for nearly three years and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was released from prison in 2017 after serving two-thirds of a 27-month sentence for fraud.

A one-year jail sentence was given to France’s former President Nicolas Sarkozy for violating campaign finance laws. Park Geun-hye, the former South Korean President, served nearly five years after she was convicted of corruption.

It will not be the end of the world if the Manhattan District Attorney prosecutes President Trump for paying Stormy Daniels to stay silent about her alleged affair with him.

If Donald Trump is charged with criminal conspiracy and racketeering for his attempt to overturn his 2020 loss in the state, the sky will not fall. Or if Special Counsel Jack Smith ends up prosecuting Trump for any number of alleged offenses he committed either during or after his time in office. We don’t know if Trump will be charged in any of these investigations but if he is, American democracy will not only be OK, it will be stronger as a result.

Over the course of these cases, it became apparent that prosecuting or jailing a former president was not in line with the values of the nation.

But now it’s time for Americans to make peace with the fact that for every remarkable president that we have been fortunate to have leading us through times of war and uncertainty, occasionally, like any other country on earth, we will get a bad apple in the White House.