Conservative attorney George Conway doesn’t want former President Donald Trump to get away with the raft of crimes he’s committed, so he’s published an op-ed in the Washington Post laying out the process for how Joe Biden’s Justice Department can prosecute and convict Trump in the coming months.
Conway begins by noting that Trump no longer has the protections of being a sitting head of state, so any jurisdiction investigate, indict, and try him:
“Private citizen Trump stands stripped of the legal and practical protections against prosecution that he enjoyed during his tenure: constitutional immunity; a protective attorney general; a special counsel operating under self-imposed and external constraints; and the ability to invoke the presidency in litigation, even meritless litigation, to delay state prosecutors’ investigations. No longer will he be able to claim interference with his public duties, or to remove those who might allow damaging investigations to proceed.”
The best way for incoming Attorney General Merrick Garland to begin pursuing Trump, Conway argues, is to follow the lead of prosecutors in New York:
“[Manhattan DA Cyrus] Vance is running a state investigation, but if Trump has committed bank or insurance fraud, that would be chargeable as federal offenses as well, including mail or wire fraud. So, too, with state tax offenses, given how Trump’s federal and state returns would no doubt track one another. Trump apparently had good reason to be concerned about who would fill [Preet] Bharara’s old job.”
Garland should also appoint multiple special counsels to look into Trump’s alleged crimes, Conway continues:
“With Trump, there’s so much to investigate criminally that one special counsel can’t do it all. Could you imagine one prosecutor in charge of addressing Trump’s finances and taxes, his hush-money payments, obstruction of the Mueller investigation, the Ukraine scandal, and post-election misconduct, for starters? It would be an impossible task for one team. One special counsel’s office couldn’t do it all, not in any reasonable amount of time, and it’s important for prosecutors to finish their work as quickly as possible. Three or four special counsels are needed. Under the regulations, each would be accountable to the attorney general.”
If the rule of law is to mean anything in this country, everyone must be held accountable for their actions. Otherwise, we have little more than a banana republic where the law applies to everyone except El Presidente. Allowing such a precedent to be set would be a fatal error that could well embolden a future U.S. president to become an American Caesar, accountable to no one and nothing but his own evil whims and fancies.
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