A second set of criminal charges has been filed against the person who
calls The Former Guy and who I call the Great Orange Ego. The first were filed by the District Attorney for Manhattan in a New York State court. The new ones have been filed by the Department of Justice in a US District Court in Miami.Given that the ice has been broken, one may assume that Special Counsel Jack Smith will request a third set of charges relating to the events of January 6, 2021, and the Fulton County DA will file charges of election tampering in a Georgia court.
One of the loudest responses coming from the accused is that no other POTUS has ever been charged in a criminal case after he left office.
[N.B. Being able to use the male pronoun “he” there is embarrassing. Finding a woman to run as the Democratic candidate in 2024 is another reason for Joe Biden to step aside.]
Precedent was set in the early years of the Republic that high office did not shield a man from indictment. Former Vice President Aaron Burr was indicted for treason in 1807.
President Thomas Jefferson, under whom Burr had served 1801-05, was so eager to have Burr found guilty, he signed blank pardon papers for the prosecutors to offer to any witnesses willing to testify against Burr. (Sound familiar?)
Jefferson asserted executive privilege in refusing to respond to a writ requesting papers he had relating to the case. Chief Justice John Marshall determined that even the POTUS was subject to the rules of a court and Jefferson was required to turn over the documents. (This also sounds familiar.)
Marshall eventually concluded that Burr could not be found guilty of treason as defined by the US Constitution. Burr had not engaged in any overt act to further a plan to detach the Louisiana Territory from the USA.
That ruling gives the Great Orange Ego cover from being indicted for treason. He didn’t engage in an overt act of treason when he instigated the sedition of January 6th. But his actions and words support sedition and conspiracy charges.
What baffles me is that some people believe that these indictments do not rise to the level needed to justify their being made given the potential repercussions to the political system. That objection arguably is why we are at this point.
Had the Great Orange Ego been stopped and investigated every time he acted inappropriately, unethically, or illegally, perhaps he wouldn’t be a former POTUS. He never would have been elected.
The man has slithered through one scandal after another for decades. It is indicative of the precariousness of our civil society that to a certain extent he is a target. He needs to be right sized as soon as possible to avoid our descent into autocracy.
[N.B. One of the reasons I knew in September 2015 that he would be the GOP nominee ten months later was because he had gotten away with so much stuff in the past. Nothing he said or did could tarnish his image in the eyes of anyone determined to support him. While other GOPer candidates and the entire press world were waiting for him to torpedo his candidacy by making some pathetically dumbass move, he was steadily gaining momentum with every absurdity and calumny.]
Rachel Maddow, with a mix of inevitability and incredulity, did her wide-eyed thing on the Lawrence O’Donnell show about MAGAts and Trumpublicans blithely investing in the candidacy of the Great Orange Ego again. Eight years later, what should anyone expect? The constituency is impervious to any negative information about their once and future POTUS.
Maddow complained that we don’t want to be one of those countries that jails its former leaders. But we have been one of those countries since 1807. Time to remind everyone again that no one is above the law, which puts all of us below the law.