#21: The Law Is Closing in on Donald Trump

This is the next of a new series of missives on our unfinished work to restore the promise of our country and its government. Each will focus on a single element of the many opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. Each will provide three steps we can all take to build upon our huge victories winning back the House in 2018 and the Presidency in 2020. 

Please click here to be added to our list. You can also follow me on Facebook where you can read and share these messages. The more people we can reach, the more we contribute to this growing movement. We share these posts on our blog, Our Unfinished Work, every three weeks.

You get to decide what the story is that you want to tell. You are within your rights under the Constitution to be miserable about American politics all through 2022. Just know as you sort through the Trump led mean-spiritedness that we are not going to keep the Senate and the House in November unless we have a positive way to articulate how Americans can move forward.

Joe Biden has such a way. He expects that by June that we will have 9 or 10 million more jobs than when he started, bolstered by the infrastructure law. He will get people to notice his historic economic performance. 

He thinks that in January he will get a Build Back Better bill from Joe Manchin (with whom he is still negotiating) to match with the American Rescue Plan and the American Jobs Plan. He believes that the new law will cover a huge increase in Pre-K education and hundreds of billions in incentives to decrease carbon emissions. He thinks that this bill coupled with already voted infrastructure improvements to the grid will signal an all-new day on climate change.

Joe Biden is hanging on to reports from South Africa that contracting the omicron variant quadruples protection against the more virulent delta variant. He is looking for our public health crisis to fade by spring.

He believes that the antipathy of independent voters to Donald Trump and his con will grow. He has made a note that conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has called Trump “ignorant, or one of the most evil men who ever lived” for the sin of recommending that people get vaccinated and boosted. There is irony here, no? 

Joe Biden sees a path not to civil war, but to civility. He believes that 2022 will be the year that the law will catch up to Donald Trump. He and Merrick Garland are tracking every one of these investigations and legal actions, each with its own significance and collectively a huge storm cloud on Trump’s horizon.

• There is the question of whether the Department of Justice will use evidence gathered by the Congressional panel investigating the insurrection to charge Trump himself for conspiring to cause the felonious assault on the Capitol by several hundred people. Or perhaps the DOJ will charge just some of Trump’s hench-people, like Steve Bannon. Laurence Tribe and an exasperation of other tv commentators have called out Merrick Garland for not signaling any such intentions publicly. Isn’t that the way we would want an Attorney General to act?

• New Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is giving high priority to the Trump case. A previous grand jury filed felony tax evasion charges against Trump financial manager Alan Weisselberg. Any charges against Trump would involve fraudulent valuation of commercial real estate to secure favorable loan terms. The appropriate tax returns and financial records have been secured now that Trump’s records-hiding appeal to the Supreme Court has been unsuccessful. The District Attorney’s office is getting regular assistance from New York Attorney General Letitia James. Since a second grand jury has been empaneled, it is very likely that additional people will be charged. The medium to high level possibility is that Trump will be one of those people.

• In what may eventually prove the most compelling case, Fulton County (Georgia) District Attorney Fani Willis is considering bringing criminal charges against Trump for election interference. Trump twice called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, looking to “find” 12,000 votes. The District Attorney has sent out letters to multiple parties warning them not to destroy records.

• There are several civil suits filed against Trump over his role in the January 6 insurrection, each taking a different approach. One case has been brought by injured Capitol police officers and the other two by members of Congress. There is a hearing in federal court in three weeks on a motion to dismiss the cases. Disclosures by the Congressional committee on such matters as Trump’s connections with the January 6 “War Room” in the Willard Hotel is helping keep these cases alive.

• There are several other lawsuits in progress. Former columnist E. Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit is still alive. The issue is whether Trump defamed her when he said in response to her rape allegation that she was trying to sell her book and was “not his type”. The federal court is determining whether Trump was acting as the President when he made the defamatory comments, which would shield him. They are skeptical.

All in all, these and scores of other lawsuits show a man who has flaunted the law his whole life. Bringing the law to him would be sweet justice for the rest of us. Whether or not he ever is incarcerated, or pays considerable damages in a civil suit, the criminal and civil lawsuits are closing in on him. They give strength to the argument that he is slowly losing his grip on America, not too soon. 

This is evidenced by the uneven prospects of the candidates he has endorsed for the U.S. Senate, the increase in Republicans who have conceded the results of the 2020 presidential election, the fact that Chris Christie has not been pummeled over his criticism of Trump, the votes of 17 Republican Senators for the infrastructure law, and the positive resolution (over Trump objections) of the debt ceiling battle.

So, we are called to get more firmness in our grip and confidence in our stride, with the off-year elections just a year away. We could do a lot more than these three things, but let’s do these three things now.

1) Setting Ourselves Straighter
	The best of us can get it wrong. When the outstanding Heather Cox Richardson meditates that Republican counties and Congressional Districts have lower economic outputs, pay lower federal taxes, and thus are supported by blue counties, it is a misstep. Our argument is different from that. We are right to say instead that wealth and economic power should NOT generate political influence.  Which district generates a higher level of federal income tax should be irrelevant to us. Let’s sort out these kinds of claims a little more clearly. For instance, Joe Manchin’s current (but not necessarily final) opposition to Build Back Better is disappointing and misguided. However, one element of his intransigence is well founded--- Congress should not be increasing the child tax credit for couples earning $200,000-$300,000 a year. The eligibility level should be lower. We should not borrow funds to give money to people who do not need it.
2) Help Republicans Help Themselves
	It doesn’t seem like a bad idea to hope that the remaining tiny band of Republican moderates will shrink to nothing, since their efforts have been meager. But any Republicans calling out Trump helps our candidates with independent voters, who we won over in the 2020 presidential election but whose support is impermanent. Thus, we should be happy that the Republican Accountability Project has shown the stability and longer-term potential that has not been demonstrated by the Lincoln Project. The “Trump Lost” billboards that the Republican Accountability Project has dotted across the country are themselves evidence that they are worthy of support. Their leadership includes Sarah Longwell, the best Republican anti-Trump strategist there is. To sign up and/or donate, click here. Former Republicans are told “Don’t sit quietly and surrender one of America’s great political parties.” That may seem like an overreach, but they were instrumental in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1963.
3) Get Into This Exciting Race
	Val Demings has been an intriguing candidate from the beginning. She was a very well-spoken floor manager during Trump’s first impeachment in the House. She is the former police chief of Orlando. This rising star is running to unseat Florida’s principle-free Senator Marco Rubio and has come across a strategy that is now getting traction. She has been using Facebook as the key tool in attracting small and medium donors. She now has 172,000 donors and raised $8 million last quarter. You can keep infamous Mark Zuckerberg out of the equation, give directly, and become donor 172,001. With key races in Pennsylvania and Ohio, we need to open up a new front in Florida, helped by significant efforts to register Latino and African-American voters.

What better time for you to jump back in (or jump higher) than the one-year anniversary of the insurrection? What now stands between Trump and the shredding of the Constitution is you and the people across the country who share your views and your commitment.

David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington