Someone has to hold to account the man who wants to take a chainsaw to the U.S. Constitution

HALIFAX—If Donald Trump isn’t soon indicted as a serial law-breaker, America will be in chaos by 2024. Nothing is as important as the rule of law to U.S. civil society –neither inflation, the post-COVID blues, balloons over Montana, nor how many birthdays Joe Biden has had. That’s because the rule of law is on the line. At the heart of that concept is a simple notion. Hundreds of millions of people can only live together in a reasonably harmonious country if there are common and well-understood rules that apply to everybody. In both his private and public life, Trump has acted as if no laws and no norms apply to him. In the process, he has weakened virtually every institution in America. So far, he has succeeded in holding himself above the law. One of his tactics has simply been to lie his brains out. When he was president, he told thousands of lies to his fellow Americans, displaying utter contempt for their intelligence and the facts. He told them they could protect themselves from COVID by injecting disinfectants, or getting some sun. In the year that 386,000 Americans died from COVID, he told them that the coronavirus was “totally under control,” and “disappearing.” He told them windmill noise caused cancer. He told them the head of the Boy Scouts called to say that Trump’s 2017 address to the National Jamboree was “the greatest speech that was ever made to them.” That call was pure fiction. “Who the hell wants to speak about politics when I’m in front of the Boy Scouts,” he said. Trump went on to use the whole speech to trash his political opponents. He told Americans that Democrat Ilhan Omar supported the al-Qaeda, increasing the number of death threats against the Muslim member of the House of Representatives, who had nothing to do with any terrorist group. Trump told them he didn’t know where the $130,000 to silence porn star Stormy Daniels about their fling came from, although he himself personally reimbursed his then-lawyer Michael Cohen for the payment. He told them over and over again that his health plan to replace Obamacare was coming in two weeks. The fabulous fortnight went on for his entire term, without results. And he told them that Joe Biden was a dangerous radical, a strange claim given Biden’s credentials as the ultimate Washington insider—36 years as a Senator from Delaware, and an eight-year stint as Obama’s vice-president. But Trump saved his biggest and most destructive lie until he was voted out of office; that the 2020 election was rigged, that he didn’t lose, and that Biden’s presidency was illegitimate. People died at the Capitol Building after Trump’s claim that the election had been stolen ignited a riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Unapologetic about the chaos he had unleashed, Trump set out to fortify his lies with a slew of lawsuits and fruitless demands for recounts. The purpose of these baseless legal actions was to give weight to his false claims. The ex-president used the lawsuits to repeat his fantasy that the 2020 election was corrupt. He lost in virtually every court, including the Supreme Court, which ruled that he had to hand over White House documents to the Unites States House Select Committee on the Jan. 6 Attack investigating the riot. But there was a much more sinister reason for Trump to go to court the way normal people go to the bathroom. Once out of office, his presidential mantle of privilege and protection was also largely gone. That meant that his dubious deeds in the post-2020 period could now be looked at with the same scrutiny as anyone else who has been accused of breaking the law—provided that the justice system has the stomach for it. It better. In the time since Trump’s 2020 electoral defeat, the darkest information in U.S. history about the dealings of an American president have come to light. Trump personally called election officials in Georgia and asked them to come up with thousands of Republican votes that didn’t exist. The world has heard his monstrous request in that taped phone call with Brad Raffensperger. A special grand jury in Georgia has advised the attorney general to pursue charges against various Trump cronies who may have lied during their testimony. The grand jury also unanimously found that there was no corruption in the Georgia election, as Trump claimed. Special prosecutor Jack Smith has taken a deep-dive into Trump’s frightening attempt to hold on to power after Americans had voted him out. It turns out that Trump had decided long before election night that if he lost, he'd claim that the election was stolen. There was talk of seizing voting machines and declaring a state of martial law: the brainchild of Team Crazy. That plan was replaced by another virtual coup attempt—creating a block of fake electors to challenge the actual election results before they could be confirmed. Trump put pressure on his vice-president, Mike Pence, to refuse to confirm the will of the people on Jan. 6. He falsely told Pence that as VP, he had the constitutional power to do so. Pence refused, and on the morning of the Jan. 6 insurrection, Trump called him out as a “pussy.” A Trump tweet accusing Pence of lacking courage inspired a novel chant at the insurrection: “Hang Pence.” Smith also appears to have Trump dead to rights on his handling of classified documents which were found in his possession at his Florida home. Trump willfully retained the documents after the National Archives demanded their return, failed to respond to a subpoena, and may have obstructed justice in the process. Trump’s response to his imminent legal jeopardy, with three criminal investigations nearing their end, has been to repeat his worn-out lie that it’s all a political witch-hunt, and to run for president again. Whether it is Georgia’s attorney general, the district attorney for the southern district of Manhattan, or special prosecutor Smith at the Department of Justice, someone has to hold to account the man who wants to take a chainsaw to the U.S. Constitution. Michael Harris is an award-winning author and journalist. The Hill Times

Someone has to hold to account the man who wants to take a chainsaw to the U.S. Constitution

Whether it is Georgia’s attorney general, southern Manhattan's district attorney, or special prosecutor Jack Smith at the Department of Justice, someone has to hold Donald Trump to account.

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Someone has to hold to account the man who wants to take a chainsaw to the U.S. Constitution

Whether it is Georgia’s attorney general, southern Manhattan's district attorney, or special prosecutor Jack Smith at the Department of Justice, someone has to hold Donald Trump to account.

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