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Day: June 2, 2024
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News Review#NewsAndTimes #NT #TNT #News #Times#World #USA #POTUS #DOJ #FBI #CIA #DIA #ODNI#Israel #Mossad #Netanyahu#Ukraine #NewAbwehr #OSINT#Putin #Russia #GRU #Путин, #Россия #SouthCaucasus #Bloggershttps://t.co/O0SIgLVWzMhttps://t.co/DO5LG3PY4T… https://t.co/ByGR8Fz2Vf pic.twitter.com/dwXphAebJx— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) June 2, 2024
A Felon in the Oval Office Would Test the American System – The New York Times https://t.co/ONFOiG4flB
–
What Happens Next
Can He Still Run for President?
The system of checks and balances established in the Constitution was meant to hold wayward presidents accountable, but some…— Michael Novakhov (@mikenov) June 2, 2024
- Trump Found Guilty
- The Verdict
- Trial Highlights
- Takeaways
- What Happens Next
- Can He Still Run for President?
The system of checks and balances established in the Constitution was meant to hold wayward presidents accountable, but some wonder how it will work if the next president is already a felon.
Listen to this article · 9:49 min Learn more
An illustration of Patrick Henry, who warned at the Virginia convention on ratifying the Constitution of the possibility of “absolute despotism.”Credit…Library of Congress
By Peter Baker
June 2, 2024, 5:05 a.m. ET
The revolutionary hero Patrick Henry knew this day would come. He might not have anticipated all the particulars, such as the porn actress in the hotel room and the illicit payoff to keep her quiet. But he feared that eventually a criminal might occupy the presidency and use his powers to thwart anyone who sought to hold him accountable. “Away with your president,” he declared, “we shall have a king.”
That was exactly what the founders sought to avoid, having thrown off the yoke of an all-powerful monarch. But as hard as they worked to establish checks and balances, the system they constructed to hold wayward presidents accountable ultimately has proved to be unsteady.
Whatever rules Americans thought were in place are now being rewritten by Donald J. Trump, the once and perhaps future president who has already shattered many barriers and precedents. The notion that 34 felonies is not automatically disqualifying and a convicted criminal can be a viable candidate for commander in chief upends two and a half centuries of assumptions about American democracy.
And it raises fundamental questions about the limits of power in a second term, should Mr. Trump be returned to office. If he wins, it means he will have survived two impeachments, four criminal indictments, civil judgments for sexual abuse and business fraud, and a felony conviction. Given that, it would be hard to imagine what institutional deterrents could discourage abuses or excesses.
Moreover, the judiciary may not be the check on the executive branch that it has been in the past. If no other cases go to trial before the election, it could be another four years before the courts could even consider whether the newly elected president jeopardized national security or illegally sought to overturn the 2020 election, as he has been charged with doing. As it is, even before the election, the Supreme Court may grant Mr. Trump at least some measure of immunity.
Mr. Trump would still have to operate within the constitutional system, analysts point out, but he has already shown a willingness to push its boundaries. When he was president, he claimed that the Constitution gave him “the right to do whatever I want.” After leaving office, he advocated “termination” of the Constitution to allow him to return to power right away without another election and vowed to dedicate a second term to “retribution.”
Some supporters and even critics maintain that the likelihood of Trump expanding or abusing the power of the presidency should he be re-elected is unlikely.Credit…Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
His advisers are already mapping out an extensive plan to increase his power in a second term by clearing out the civil service to install more political appointees. Mr. Trump has threatened to prosecute not only President Biden but others that he considers to be his enemies. In seeking immunity from the Supreme Court, Mr. Trump’s lawyers even embraced the argument that there are circumstances when a president could order the assassination of a political rival without criminal jeopardy.
“There is no useful historical precedent whatsoever,” said Jeffrey A. Engel, the director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. “The interesting matter is not that a former president has been tried and convicted, as the founders might well have anticipated, but that he remains a viable candidate for office, which they would have found astounding and ultimately disheartening.”
The question of how to create an empowered executive without making him an unaccountable monarch absorbed the framers when they designed the Constitution. They divided power among three branches of government and envisioned impeachment as a check on a rogue president. They even explicitly made clear that an impeached president could still be prosecuted for crimes after being removed from office.
But even then, there were voices worried that the limits were not enough. Among them was Henry, the patriot famed for his “give me liberty or give me death” speech. At the Virginia convention on ratifying the Constitution in 1788, he warned of the possibility of “absolute despotism.”
“His point is that if such a criminal president comes to power, that president will realize there are few mechanisms to stop him,” said Corey L. Brettschneider, a Brown University professor who writes about Henry in his forthcoming book, “The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It.” “He goes so far as to claim that such a president will claim the throne of a monarch.”
“My argument,” Mr. Brettschneider added, “is that this warning is even more true now given the possible immunity of a sitting president from indictment and the powerlessness that we have seen after two attempted impeachments.”
Robert Kagan, a scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, warned in his new book, “Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart — Again,” that a second Trump term could result in unfettered abuses of authority.
“With all the immense power of the American presidency, with his ability to control and direct the Justice Department, the F.B.I., the I.R.S., the intelligence services and the military, what will prevent him from using the power of the state to go after his political enemies?” Mr. Kagan wrote.
To Mr. Trump’s supporters and even some of his critics, such concerns go too far. His allies maintain that when Mr. Trump makes provocative comments like being a “dictator” for a day, he is either joking or pushing buttons to get a rise out of his critics. The real crisis is not a lack of accountability for presidents, they argue, but the politicization of the justice system against Mr. Trump.
Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University who was in the Manhattan courtroom on Thursday when the jury returned its guilty verdict, called the case against Mr. Trump “a raw political use of the criminal justice system” and a “thrill kill” by his opponents. “What happened in that room comes at a cost,” he said on Fox News. “It comes at a cost to the rule of law.”
Even some who do not support Mr. Trump argue that warnings of an unchecked executive are overwrought. Eric Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School who wrote his own book calling Mr. Trump a demagogue who tests American democracy, said the former president was too “weak” and incompetent to execute a true dictatorship.
“Trump was and is many things, most of them bad,” Mr. Posner wrote last winter in response to a Washington Post column by Mr. Kagan. “But he wasn’t a fascist when he was president, and he won’t be a dictator if he is elected a second time.” While Mr. Trump riled up a mob and spread lies to try to stay in power, Mr. Posner added, “he failed completely.”
American lawmakers have struggled to devise an independent mechanism to enforce presidential accountability without seeming so tainted by politics that it loses credibility with the public. The issue has come up repeatedly over the last half century without a consensus resolution.
Nine out of the last 10 presidents have had a special counsel or independent counsel investigate themselves or someone in their administration — the lone exception being Barack Obama. (Gerald R. Ford’s campaign finances came under scrutiny while he was vice president and resulted in no charges.)
President Richard Nixon’s firing of the first special prosecutor investigating Watergate prompted Congress to pass a law establishing an independent counsel. Credit…Associated Press
Neither of the two who faced serious risk of criminal charges before Mr. Trump let it get that far. Richard M. Nixon escaped prosecution for the Watergate coverup by resigning and then accepting a pardon from Mr. Ford, his successor. Bill Clinton avoided possible perjury and obstruction of justice charges stemming from his affair with Monica S. Lewinsky by making a deal with prosecutors on his last day in office in which he admitted to providing false testimony under oath and gave up his law license.
Mindful that Nixon fired the first special prosecutor investigating Watergate, Congress passed the independent counsel law creating a prosecutor theoretically insulated from politics. But Republicans grew disenchanted with that model after Lawrence Walsh’s Iran-contra investigation, as did Democrats after Ken Starr’s Whitewater investigation, so Congress let the law lapse.
The special counsels who have investigated subsequent presidents, including both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, were appointed by the attorney general at the time. While they have considerable autonomy, they are not completely independent and therefore their investigations and conclusions have often been assailed as political, even without evidence of interference.
Having endured the Russia investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and the current election interference and classified documents investigations by the special counsel Jack Smith, Mr. Trump is hardly likely to appoint an attorney general who would allow Mr. Smith to continue his work, much less name any new special counsel to look into him.
Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing the two federal cases against Mr. Trump, was appointed by the attorney general. It is unlikely that he would continue his work under a Trump Justice Department.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
Instead, Mr. Trump has proved that pushing ahead relentlessly regardless of scandal, investigation and trial can work for him politically — at least so far. He is on track to win the Republican presidential nomination for a third time and has at least an even chance of beating Mr. Biden to return to the White House. If he does, he will set a new standard for what is considered acceptable in a president.
“I think my biggest takeaway is how lucky we’ve been as a nation to have presidents who have mostly comported themselves with dignity, or at least respected the dignity of the office,” said Lindsay M. Chervinsky, the incoming executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library and the author of “Making the Presidency,” a book about John Adams to be published in September. “This conviction brings into stark relief how violently Trump has rejected that tradition.”
- Trump Found Guilty
- The Verdict
- Trial Highlights
- Takeaways
- What Happens Next
- Can He Still Run for President?
The system of checks and balances established in the Constitution was meant to hold wayward presidents accountable, but some wonder how it will work if the next president is already a felon.
Listen to this article · 9:49 min Learn more
An illustration of Patrick Henry, who warned at the Virginia convention on ratifying the Constitution of the possibility of “absolute despotism.”Credit…Library of Congress
By Peter Baker
June 2, 2024, 5:05 a.m. ET
The revolutionary hero Patrick Henry knew this day would come. He might not have anticipated all the particulars, such as the porn actress in the hotel room and the illicit payoff to keep her quiet. But he feared that eventually a criminal might occupy the presidency and use his powers to thwart anyone who sought to hold him accountable. “Away with your president,” he declared, “we shall have a king.”
That was exactly what the founders sought to avoid, having thrown off the yoke of an all-powerful monarch. But as hard as they worked to establish checks and balances, the system they constructed to hold wayward presidents accountable ultimately has proved to be unsteady.
Whatever rules Americans thought were in place are now being rewritten by Donald J. Trump, the once and perhaps future president who has already shattered many barriers and precedents. The notion that 34 felonies is not automatically disqualifying and a convicted criminal can be a viable candidate for commander in chief upends two and a half centuries of assumptions about American democracy.
And it raises fundamental questions about the limits of power in a second term, should Mr. Trump be returned to office. If he wins, it means he will have survived two impeachments, four criminal indictments, civil judgments for sexual abuse and business fraud, and a felony conviction. Given that, it would be hard to imagine what institutional deterrents could discourage abuses or excesses.
Moreover, the judiciary may not be the check on the executive branch that it has been in the past. If no other cases go to trial before the election, it could be another four years before the courts could even consider whether the newly elected president jeopardized national security or illegally sought to overturn the 2020 election, as he has been charged with doing. As it is, even before the election, the Supreme Court may grant Mr. Trump at least some measure of immunity.
Mr. Trump would still have to operate within the constitutional system, analysts point out, but he has already shown a willingness to push its boundaries. When he was president, he claimed that the Constitution gave him “the right to do whatever I want.” After leaving office, he advocated “termination” of the Constitution to allow him to return to power right away without another election and vowed to dedicate a second term to “retribution.”
Some supporters and even critics maintain that the likelihood of Trump expanding or abusing the power of the presidency should he be re-elected is unlikely.Credit…Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
His advisers are already mapping out an extensive plan to increase his power in a second term by clearing out the civil service to install more political appointees. Mr. Trump has threatened to prosecute not only President Biden but others that he considers to be his enemies. In seeking immunity from the Supreme Court, Mr. Trump’s lawyers even embraced the argument that there are circumstances when a president could order the assassination of a political rival without criminal jeopardy.
“There is no useful historical precedent whatsoever,” said Jeffrey A. Engel, the director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. “The interesting matter is not that a former president has been tried and convicted, as the founders might well have anticipated, but that he remains a viable candidate for office, which they would have found astounding and ultimately disheartening.”
The question of how to create an empowered executive without making him an unaccountable monarch absorbed the framers when they designed the Constitution. They divided power among three branches of government and envisioned impeachment as a check on a rogue president. They even explicitly made clear that an impeached president could still be prosecuted for crimes after being removed from office.
But even then, there were voices worried that the limits were not enough. Among them was Henry, the patriot famed for his “give me liberty or give me death” speech. At the Virginia convention on ratifying the Constitution in 1788, he warned of the possibility of “absolute despotism.”
“His point is that if such a criminal president comes to power, that president will realize there are few mechanisms to stop him,” said Corey L. Brettschneider, a Brown University professor who writes about Henry in his forthcoming book, “The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It.” “He goes so far as to claim that such a president will claim the throne of a monarch.”
“My argument,” Mr. Brettschneider added, “is that this warning is even more true now given the possible immunity of a sitting president from indictment and the powerlessness that we have seen after two attempted impeachments.”
Robert Kagan, a scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, warned in his new book, “Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart — Again,” that a second Trump term could result in unfettered abuses of authority.
“With all the immense power of the American presidency, with his ability to control and direct the Justice Department, the F.B.I., the I.R.S., the intelligence services and the military, what will prevent him from using the power of the state to go after his political enemies?” Mr. Kagan wrote.
To Mr. Trump’s supporters and even some of his critics, such concerns go too far. His allies maintain that when Mr. Trump makes provocative comments like being a “dictator” for a day, he is either joking or pushing buttons to get a rise out of his critics. The real crisis is not a lack of accountability for presidents, they argue, but the politicization of the justice system against Mr. Trump.
Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University who was in the Manhattan courtroom on Thursday when the jury returned its guilty verdict, called the case against Mr. Trump “a raw political use of the criminal justice system” and a “thrill kill” by his opponents. “What happened in that room comes at a cost,” he said on Fox News. “It comes at a cost to the rule of law.”
Even some who do not support Mr. Trump argue that warnings of an unchecked executive are overwrought. Eric Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School who wrote his own book calling Mr. Trump a demagogue who tests American democracy, said the former president was too “weak” and incompetent to execute a true dictatorship.
“Trump was and is many things, most of them bad,” Mr. Posner wrote last winter in response to a Washington Post column by Mr. Kagan. “But he wasn’t a fascist when he was president, and he won’t be a dictator if he is elected a second time.” While Mr. Trump riled up a mob and spread lies to try to stay in power, Mr. Posner added, “he failed completely.”
American lawmakers have struggled to devise an independent mechanism to enforce presidential accountability without seeming so tainted by politics that it loses credibility with the public. The issue has come up repeatedly over the last half century without a consensus resolution.
Nine out of the last 10 presidents have had a special counsel or independent counsel investigate themselves or someone in their administration — the lone exception being Barack Obama. (Gerald R. Ford’s campaign finances came under scrutiny while he was vice president and resulted in no charges.)
President Richard Nixon’s firing of the first special prosecutor investigating Watergate prompted Congress to pass a law establishing an independent counsel. Credit…Associated Press
Neither of the two who faced serious risk of criminal charges before Mr. Trump let it get that far. Richard M. Nixon escaped prosecution for the Watergate coverup by resigning and then accepting a pardon from Mr. Ford, his successor. Bill Clinton avoided possible perjury and obstruction of justice charges stemming from his affair with Monica S. Lewinsky by making a deal with prosecutors on his last day in office in which he admitted to providing false testimony under oath and gave up his law license.
Mindful that Nixon fired the first special prosecutor investigating Watergate, Congress passed the independent counsel law creating a prosecutor theoretically insulated from politics. But Republicans grew disenchanted with that model after Lawrence Walsh’s Iran-contra investigation, as did Democrats after Ken Starr’s Whitewater investigation, so Congress let the law lapse.
The special counsels who have investigated subsequent presidents, including both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, were appointed by the attorney general at the time. While they have considerable autonomy, they are not completely independent and therefore their investigations and conclusions have often been assailed as political, even without evidence of interference.
Having endured the Russia investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and the current election interference and classified documents investigations by the special counsel Jack Smith, Mr. Trump is hardly likely to appoint an attorney general who would allow Mr. Smith to continue his work, much less name any new special counsel to look into him.
Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing the two federal cases against Mr. Trump, was appointed by the attorney general. It is unlikely that he would continue his work under a Trump Justice Department.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
Instead, Mr. Trump has proved that pushing ahead relentlessly regardless of scandal, investigation and trial can work for him politically — at least so far. He is on track to win the Republican presidential nomination for a third time and has at least an even chance of beating Mr. Biden to return to the White House. If he does, he will set a new standard for what is considered acceptable in a president.
“I think my biggest takeaway is how lucky we’ve been as a nation to have presidents who have mostly comported themselves with dignity, or at least respected the dignity of the office,” said Lindsay M. Chervinsky, the incoming executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library and the author of “Making the Presidency,” a book about John Adams to be published in September. “This conviction brings into stark relief how violently Trump has rejected that tradition.”
- Trump Found Guilty
- The Verdict
- Trial Highlights
- Takeaways
- What Happens Next
- Can He Still Run for President?
The system of checks and balances established in the Constitution was meant to hold wayward presidents accountable, but some wonder how it will work if the next president is already a felon.
Listen to this article · 9:49 min Learn more
An illustration of Patrick Henry, who warned at the Virginia convention on ratifying the Constitution of the possibility of “absolute despotism.”Credit…Library of Congress
By Peter Baker
June 2, 2024, 5:05 a.m. ET
The revolutionary hero Patrick Henry knew this day would come. He might not have anticipated all the particulars, such as the porn actress in the hotel room and the illicit payoff to keep her quiet. But he feared that eventually a criminal might occupy the presidency and use his powers to thwart anyone who sought to hold him accountable. “Away with your president,” he declared, “we shall have a king.”
That was exactly what the founders sought to avoid, having thrown off the yoke of an all-powerful monarch. But as hard as they worked to establish checks and balances, the system they constructed to hold wayward presidents accountable ultimately has proved to be unsteady.
Whatever rules Americans thought were in place are now being rewritten by Donald J. Trump, the once and perhaps future president who has already shattered many barriers and precedents. The notion that 34 felonies is not automatically disqualifying and a convicted criminal can be a viable candidate for commander in chief upends two and a half centuries of assumptions about American democracy.
And it raises fundamental questions about the limits of power in a second term, should Mr. Trump be returned to office. If he wins, it means he will have survived two impeachments, four criminal indictments, civil judgments for sexual abuse and business fraud, and a felony conviction. Given that, it would be hard to imagine what institutional deterrents could discourage abuses or excesses.
Moreover, the judiciary may not be the check on the executive branch that it has been in the past. If no other cases go to trial before the election, it could be another four years before the courts could even consider whether the newly elected president jeopardized national security or illegally sought to overturn the 2020 election, as he has been charged with doing. As it is, even before the election, the Supreme Court may grant Mr. Trump at least some measure of immunity.
Mr. Trump would still have to operate within the constitutional system, analysts point out, but he has already shown a willingness to push its boundaries. When he was president, he claimed that the Constitution gave him “the right to do whatever I want.” After leaving office, he advocated “termination” of the Constitution to allow him to return to power right away without another election and vowed to dedicate a second term to “retribution.”
Some supporters and even critics maintain that the likelihood of Trump expanding or abusing the power of the presidency should he be re-elected is unlikely.Credit…Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
His advisers are already mapping out an extensive plan to increase his power in a second term by clearing out the civil service to install more political appointees. Mr. Trump has threatened to prosecute not only President Biden but others that he considers to be his enemies. In seeking immunity from the Supreme Court, Mr. Trump’s lawyers even embraced the argument that there are circumstances when a president could order the assassination of a political rival without criminal jeopardy.
“There is no useful historical precedent whatsoever,” said Jeffrey A. Engel, the director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. “The interesting matter is not that a former president has been tried and convicted, as the founders might well have anticipated, but that he remains a viable candidate for office, which they would have found astounding and ultimately disheartening.”
The question of how to create an empowered executive without making him an unaccountable monarch absorbed the framers when they designed the Constitution. They divided power among three branches of government and envisioned impeachment as a check on a rogue president. They even explicitly made clear that an impeached president could still be prosecuted for crimes after being removed from office.
But even then, there were voices worried that the limits were not enough. Among them was Henry, the patriot famed for his “give me liberty or give me death” speech. At the Virginia convention on ratifying the Constitution in 1788, he warned of the possibility of “absolute despotism.”
“His point is that if such a criminal president comes to power, that president will realize there are few mechanisms to stop him,” said Corey L. Brettschneider, a Brown University professor who writes about Henry in his forthcoming book, “The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It.” “He goes so far as to claim that such a president will claim the throne of a monarch.”
“My argument,” Mr. Brettschneider added, “is that this warning is even more true now given the possible immunity of a sitting president from indictment and the powerlessness that we have seen after two attempted impeachments.”
Robert Kagan, a scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, warned in his new book, “Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart — Again,” that a second Trump term could result in unfettered abuses of authority.
“With all the immense power of the American presidency, with his ability to control and direct the Justice Department, the F.B.I., the I.R.S., the intelligence services and the military, what will prevent him from using the power of the state to go after his political enemies?” Mr. Kagan wrote.
To Mr. Trump’s supporters and even some of his critics, such concerns go too far. His allies maintain that when Mr. Trump makes provocative comments like being a “dictator” for a day, he is either joking or pushing buttons to get a rise out of his critics. The real crisis is not a lack of accountability for presidents, they argue, but the politicization of the justice system against Mr. Trump.
Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University who was in the Manhattan courtroom on Thursday when the jury returned its guilty verdict, called the case against Mr. Trump “a raw political use of the criminal justice system” and a “thrill kill” by his opponents. “What happened in that room comes at a cost,” he said on Fox News. “It comes at a cost to the rule of law.”
Even some who do not support Mr. Trump argue that warnings of an unchecked executive are overwrought. Eric Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School who wrote his own book calling Mr. Trump a demagogue who tests American democracy, said the former president was too “weak” and incompetent to execute a true dictatorship.
“Trump was and is many things, most of them bad,” Mr. Posner wrote last winter in response to a Washington Post column by Mr. Kagan. “But he wasn’t a fascist when he was president, and he won’t be a dictator if he is elected a second time.” While Mr. Trump riled up a mob and spread lies to try to stay in power, Mr. Posner added, “he failed completely.”
American lawmakers have struggled to devise an independent mechanism to enforce presidential accountability without seeming so tainted by politics that it loses credibility with the public. The issue has come up repeatedly over the last half century without a consensus resolution.
Nine out of the last 10 presidents have had a special counsel or independent counsel investigate themselves or someone in their administration — the lone exception being Barack Obama. (Gerald R. Ford’s campaign finances came under scrutiny while he was vice president and resulted in no charges.)
President Richard Nixon’s firing of the first special prosecutor investigating Watergate prompted Congress to pass a law establishing an independent counsel. Credit…Associated Press
Neither of the two who faced serious risk of criminal charges before Mr. Trump let it get that far. Richard M. Nixon escaped prosecution for the Watergate coverup by resigning and then accepting a pardon from Mr. Ford, his successor. Bill Clinton avoided possible perjury and obstruction of justice charges stemming from his affair with Monica S. Lewinsky by making a deal with prosecutors on his last day in office in which he admitted to providing false testimony under oath and gave up his law license.
Mindful that Nixon fired the first special prosecutor investigating Watergate, Congress passed the independent counsel law creating a prosecutor theoretically insulated from politics. But Republicans grew disenchanted with that model after Lawrence Walsh’s Iran-contra investigation, as did Democrats after Ken Starr’s Whitewater investigation, so Congress let the law lapse.
The special counsels who have investigated subsequent presidents, including both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, were appointed by the attorney general at the time. While they have considerable autonomy, they are not completely independent and therefore their investigations and conclusions have often been assailed as political, even without evidence of interference.
Having endured the Russia investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and the current election interference and classified documents investigations by the special counsel Jack Smith, Mr. Trump is hardly likely to appoint an attorney general who would allow Mr. Smith to continue his work, much less name any new special counsel to look into him.
Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing the two federal cases against Mr. Trump, was appointed by the attorney general. It is unlikely that he would continue his work under a Trump Justice Department.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
Instead, Mr. Trump has proved that pushing ahead relentlessly regardless of scandal, investigation and trial can work for him politically — at least so far. He is on track to win the Republican presidential nomination for a third time and has at least an even chance of beating Mr. Biden to return to the White House. If he does, he will set a new standard for what is considered acceptable in a president.
“I think my biggest takeaway is how lucky we’ve been as a nation to have presidents who have mostly comported themselves with dignity, or at least respected the dignity of the office,” said Lindsay M. Chervinsky, the incoming executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library and the author of “Making the Presidency,” a book about John Adams to be published in September. “This conviction brings into stark relief how violently Trump has rejected that tradition.”
- Trump Found Guilty
- The Verdict
- Trial Highlights
- Takeaways
- What Happens Next
- Can He Still Run for President?
The system of checks and balances established in the Constitution was meant to hold wayward presidents accountable, but some wonder how it will work if the next president is already a felon.
Listen to this article · 9:49 min Learn more
An illustration of Patrick Henry, who warned at the Virginia convention on ratifying the Constitution of the possibility of “absolute despotism.”Credit…Library of Congress
By Peter Baker
June 2, 2024, 5:05 a.m. ET
The revolutionary hero Patrick Henry knew this day would come. He might not have anticipated all the particulars, such as the porn actress in the hotel room and the illicit payoff to keep her quiet. But he feared that eventually a criminal might occupy the presidency and use his powers to thwart anyone who sought to hold him accountable. “Away with your president,” he declared, “we shall have a king.”
That was exactly what the founders sought to avoid, having thrown off the yoke of an all-powerful monarch. But as hard as they worked to establish checks and balances, the system they constructed to hold wayward presidents accountable ultimately has proved to be unsteady.
Whatever rules Americans thought were in place are now being rewritten by Donald J. Trump, the once and perhaps future president who has already shattered many barriers and precedents. The notion that 34 felonies is not automatically disqualifying and a convicted criminal can be a viable candidate for commander in chief upends two and a half centuries of assumptions about American democracy.
And it raises fundamental questions about the limits of power in a second term, should Mr. Trump be returned to office. If he wins, it means he will have survived two impeachments, four criminal indictments, civil judgments for sexual abuse and business fraud, and a felony conviction. Given that, it would be hard to imagine what institutional deterrents could discourage abuses or excesses.
Moreover, the judiciary may not be the check on the executive branch that it has been in the past. If no other cases go to trial before the election, it could be another four years before the courts could even consider whether the newly elected president jeopardized national security or illegally sought to overturn the 2020 election, as he has been charged with doing. As it is, even before the election, the Supreme Court may grant Mr. Trump at least some measure of immunity.
Mr. Trump would still have to operate within the constitutional system, analysts point out, but he has already shown a willingness to push its boundaries. When he was president, he claimed that the Constitution gave him “the right to do whatever I want.” After leaving office, he advocated “termination” of the Constitution to allow him to return to power right away without another election and vowed to dedicate a second term to “retribution.”
Some supporters and even critics maintain that the likelihood of Trump expanding or abusing the power of the presidency should he be re-elected is unlikely.Credit…Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
His advisers are already mapping out an extensive plan to increase his power in a second term by clearing out the civil service to install more political appointees. Mr. Trump has threatened to prosecute not only President Biden but others that he considers to be his enemies. In seeking immunity from the Supreme Court, Mr. Trump’s lawyers even embraced the argument that there are circumstances when a president could order the assassination of a political rival without criminal jeopardy.
“There is no useful historical precedent whatsoever,” said Jeffrey A. Engel, the director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. “The interesting matter is not that a former president has been tried and convicted, as the founders might well have anticipated, but that he remains a viable candidate for office, which they would have found astounding and ultimately disheartening.”
The question of how to create an empowered executive without making him an unaccountable monarch absorbed the framers when they designed the Constitution. They divided power among three branches of government and envisioned impeachment as a check on a rogue president. They even explicitly made clear that an impeached president could still be prosecuted for crimes after being removed from office.
But even then, there were voices worried that the limits were not enough. Among them was Henry, the patriot famed for his “give me liberty or give me death” speech. At the Virginia convention on ratifying the Constitution in 1788, he warned of the possibility of “absolute despotism.”
“His point is that if such a criminal president comes to power, that president will realize there are few mechanisms to stop him,” said Corey L. Brettschneider, a Brown University professor who writes about Henry in his forthcoming book, “The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It.” “He goes so far as to claim that such a president will claim the throne of a monarch.”
“My argument,” Mr. Brettschneider added, “is that this warning is even more true now given the possible immunity of a sitting president from indictment and the powerlessness that we have seen after two attempted impeachments.”
Robert Kagan, a scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington, warned in his new book, “Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart — Again,” that a second Trump term could result in unfettered abuses of authority.
“With all the immense power of the American presidency, with his ability to control and direct the Justice Department, the F.B.I., the I.R.S., the intelligence services and the military, what will prevent him from using the power of the state to go after his political enemies?” Mr. Kagan wrote.
To Mr. Trump’s supporters and even some of his critics, such concerns go too far. His allies maintain that when Mr. Trump makes provocative comments like being a “dictator” for a day, he is either joking or pushing buttons to get a rise out of his critics. The real crisis is not a lack of accountability for presidents, they argue, but the politicization of the justice system against Mr. Trump.
Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University who was in the Manhattan courtroom on Thursday when the jury returned its guilty verdict, called the case against Mr. Trump “a raw political use of the criminal justice system” and a “thrill kill” by his opponents. “What happened in that room comes at a cost,” he said on Fox News. “It comes at a cost to the rule of law.”
Even some who do not support Mr. Trump argue that warnings of an unchecked executive are overwrought. Eric Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School who wrote his own book calling Mr. Trump a demagogue who tests American democracy, said the former president was too “weak” and incompetent to execute a true dictatorship.
“Trump was and is many things, most of them bad,” Mr. Posner wrote last winter in response to a Washington Post column by Mr. Kagan. “But he wasn’t a fascist when he was president, and he won’t be a dictator if he is elected a second time.” While Mr. Trump riled up a mob and spread lies to try to stay in power, Mr. Posner added, “he failed completely.”
American lawmakers have struggled to devise an independent mechanism to enforce presidential accountability without seeming so tainted by politics that it loses credibility with the public. The issue has come up repeatedly over the last half century without a consensus resolution.
Nine out of the last 10 presidents have had a special counsel or independent counsel investigate themselves or someone in their administration — the lone exception being Barack Obama. (Gerald R. Ford’s campaign finances came under scrutiny while he was vice president and resulted in no charges.)
President Richard Nixon’s firing of the first special prosecutor investigating Watergate prompted Congress to pass a law establishing an independent counsel. Credit…Associated Press
Neither of the two who faced serious risk of criminal charges before Mr. Trump let it get that far. Richard M. Nixon escaped prosecution for the Watergate coverup by resigning and then accepting a pardon from Mr. Ford, his successor. Bill Clinton avoided possible perjury and obstruction of justice charges stemming from his affair with Monica S. Lewinsky by making a deal with prosecutors on his last day in office in which he admitted to providing false testimony under oath and gave up his law license.
Mindful that Nixon fired the first special prosecutor investigating Watergate, Congress passed the independent counsel law creating a prosecutor theoretically insulated from politics. But Republicans grew disenchanted with that model after Lawrence Walsh’s Iran-contra investigation, as did Democrats after Ken Starr’s Whitewater investigation, so Congress let the law lapse.
The special counsels who have investigated subsequent presidents, including both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, were appointed by the attorney general at the time. While they have considerable autonomy, they are not completely independent and therefore their investigations and conclusions have often been assailed as political, even without evidence of interference.
Having endured the Russia investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and the current election interference and classified documents investigations by the special counsel Jack Smith, Mr. Trump is hardly likely to appoint an attorney general who would allow Mr. Smith to continue his work, much less name any new special counsel to look into him.
Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing the two federal cases against Mr. Trump, was appointed by the attorney general. It is unlikely that he would continue his work under a Trump Justice Department.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
Instead, Mr. Trump has proved that pushing ahead relentlessly regardless of scandal, investigation and trial can work for him politically — at least so far. He is on track to win the Republican presidential nomination for a third time and has at least an even chance of beating Mr. Biden to return to the White House. If he does, he will set a new standard for what is considered acceptable in a president.
“I think my biggest takeaway is how lucky we’ve been as a nation to have presidents who have mostly comported themselves with dignity, or at least respected the dignity of the office,” said Lindsay M. Chervinsky, the incoming executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library and the author of “Making the Presidency,” a book about John Adams to be published in September. “This conviction brings into stark relief how violently Trump has rejected that tradition.”
The story of the past 27 months since Russia invaded Ukraine has been one of crumbling taboos. After repelling Russia’s initial march on Kyiv, Ukraine has asked its Western allies for greater and greater support: first ammunition, then tanks, then cluster munitions, then fighter jets.
Each time, the West has agonized over whether to grant Kyiv’s latest request, fearing escalation and a potential Russian response. Each time, the taboo was broken – and nothing happened. What seemed beyond the pale one week had become banal the next.
But the rhythm of deliberation and delay has been hard to shake. Despite securing more weapons from the United States last month, Ukraine has not been able to use them as it pleases. As Moscow this month launched its surprise assault on the northeastern Kharkiv region, Washington forbade Kyiv from using US weapons to strike targets inside Russia.
This too crumbled. President Joe Biden this week gave Ukraine permission to carry out limited strikes using US weapons in Russian territory around Kharkiv, after several European nations had removed restrictions on how the weapons they have given to Kyiv can be used.
“Over the past few weeks, Ukraine came to us and asked for the authorization to use weapons that were provided to defend against this aggression” near Kharkiv city, “including against Russian forces that are massing on the Russian side of the border,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday on a visit to Prague, the Czech capital. He confirmed Biden had approved Ukraine’s request.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky praised the decision as a “step forward” which will help his forces to defend the embattled Kharkiv region.
While the decision may mark a new phase of the war, analysts have questioned whether the new freedoms will significantly bolster Ukraine’s ability to repel Russia’s invasion.
Some are bullish. This month, the calls for the US to remove the restrictions became more desperate, as Russia continue to pummel Kharkiv city with missiles and make gains elsewhere in the region.
In a CNN op-ed, Adam Kinzinger and Ben Hodges described the bizarre effect of the US taboo: “We have heard Ukrainian soldiers repeatedly tell stories of Russian columns attacking, being repelled, and retreating to safe Russian territory to regroup, have a hot meal, plan and attack again.”
“Ukraine cannot win if Russians can attack civilian targets with impunity and call ‘time out’ in their own territory,” they wrote, urging Biden to call his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin’s bluff.
But military analysts have tempered expectations, partly because the US is standing firm in not allowing Ukraine to use the most formidable munition it has been given to fire into Russia: the long-range missiles known as ATACMS that can hit targets 300 kilometers (nearly 200 miles) away.
Instead, Ukraine can only use shorter-range missiles known as GMLRS, which have a range of around 70 kilometers (around 40 miles).
Kateryna Stepanenko, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, told CNN the policy change will “blunt” Russia’s offensive in Kharkiv, but still “preserves the majority of Russia’s sanctuary space.”
“The policy still protects Russia’s operational and deep rear sufficiently that this change near Kharkiv Oblast is insufficient to bring about a turning point in the war. Ukraine particularly needs the capacity to strike deep rear areas to defeat the Russian ground and air threats, as many Russian airfields that support strikes against Ukrainian cities are located outside of the allowed GMLRS range,” she said.
Franz-Stefan Gady, an associate fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told CNN the GMLRS cross-border strikes will allow Ukraine “to hit some Russian staging areas, command and control centers, as well as supply depots. It will not stop but complicate Russian military operations against Kharkhiv.”
“We need to be realistic about what can be expected from this policy change, since the Russian armed forces have already adapted to the introduction of ground-based precision fires,” he said.
Mathieu Boulegue, a researcher at the Center for European Policy Analysis, said the policy change would allow Ukraine to “be more efficient when it comes to repelling attacks and pushing back preemptively.”
“It’s not a game changer, per se. It’s an add-on, a steroid, an extra booster for Ukraine to defend itself,” he said.
The US is joining the United Kingdom, France, Germany and several others in removing restrictions on how Ukraine uses the weapons it is given.
Before Biden gave the green light, Putin had made veiled nuclear threats to countries considering allowing Ukraine to strike Russia with their weapons. He warned the move could lead to “serious consequences,” particularly for “small and densely populated countries.”
As well as making nuclear threats, Putin also signaled earlier this month that he was open to peace talks.
“All of these false narratives deliberately aimed to discourage Western decisionmakers from allowing Ukraine to preempt Russia’s attack on Kharkiv city,” Stepanenko said.
While the removal of this taboo appears to mark a new chapter in the war, Russia has previously experienced Ukrainian strikes with Western weapons on territory it considers its own.
Ukraine has frequently targeted occupied Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, using “Storm Shadow” missiles provided by the UK.
Ukraine also launched strikes on Kharkiv and Kherson in late 2022, as it sought to liberate the regions occupied by Russia in the early weeks of the full-scale invasion.
In both cases, Russia had warned Ukraine and its Western allies not to cross its red line. In both cases, Ukraine and its Western allies ignored the warning.
“The Kremlin already regards strikes against occupied Crimea and Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia oblasts as ‘strikes against Russia,’ but the reality is that there are few things that Russia can do to further escalate its war in Ukraine without incurring major risks,” Stepanenko said.
CNN’s Alex Marquardt, Jennifer Hansler, Kylie Atwood, Niamh Kennedy and Anna Chernova contributed reporting.
The story of the past 27 months since Russia invaded Ukraine has been one of crumbling taboos. After repelling Russia’s initial march on Kyiv, Ukraine has asked its Western allies for greater and greater support: first ammunition, then tanks, then cluster munitions, then fighter jets.
Each time, the West has agonized over whether to grant Kyiv’s latest request, fearing escalation and a potential Russian response. Each time, the taboo was broken – and nothing happened. What seemed beyond the pale one week had become banal the next.
But the rhythm of deliberation and delay has been hard to shake. Despite securing more weapons from the United States last month, Ukraine has not been able to use them as it pleases. As Moscow this month launched its surprise assault on the northeastern Kharkiv region, Washington forbade Kyiv from using US weapons to strike targets inside Russia.
This too crumbled. President Joe Biden this week gave Ukraine permission to carry out limited strikes using US weapons in Russian territory around Kharkiv, after several European nations had removed restrictions on how the weapons they have given to Kyiv can be used.
“Over the past few weeks, Ukraine came to us and asked for the authorization to use weapons that were provided to defend against this aggression” near Kharkiv city, “including against Russian forces that are massing on the Russian side of the border,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday on a visit to Prague, the Czech capital. He confirmed Biden had approved Ukraine’s request.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky praised the decision as a “step forward” which will help his forces to defend the embattled Kharkiv region.
While the decision may mark a new phase of the war, analysts have questioned whether the new freedoms will significantly bolster Ukraine’s ability to repel Russia’s invasion.
Some are bullish. This month, the calls for the US to remove the restrictions became more desperate, as Russia continue to pummel Kharkiv city with missiles and make gains elsewhere in the region.
In a CNN op-ed, Adam Kinzinger and Ben Hodges described the bizarre effect of the US taboo: “We have heard Ukrainian soldiers repeatedly tell stories of Russian columns attacking, being repelled, and retreating to safe Russian territory to regroup, have a hot meal, plan and attack again.”
“Ukraine cannot win if Russians can attack civilian targets with impunity and call ‘time out’ in their own territory,” they wrote, urging Biden to call his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin’s bluff.
But military analysts have tempered expectations, partly because the US is standing firm in not allowing Ukraine to use the most formidable munition it has been given to fire into Russia: the long-range missiles known as ATACMS that can hit targets 300 kilometers (nearly 200 miles) away.
Instead, Ukraine can only use shorter-range missiles known as GMLRS, which have a range of around 70 kilometers (around 40 miles).
Kateryna Stepanenko, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, told CNN the policy change will “blunt” Russia’s offensive in Kharkiv, but still “preserves the majority of Russia’s sanctuary space.”
“The policy still protects Russia’s operational and deep rear sufficiently that this change near Kharkiv Oblast is insufficient to bring about a turning point in the war. Ukraine particularly needs the capacity to strike deep rear areas to defeat the Russian ground and air threats, as many Russian airfields that support strikes against Ukrainian cities are located outside of the allowed GMLRS range,” she said.
Franz-Stefan Gady, an associate fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told CNN the GMLRS cross-border strikes will allow Ukraine “to hit some Russian staging areas, command and control centers, as well as supply depots. It will not stop but complicate Russian military operations against Kharkhiv.”
“We need to be realistic about what can be expected from this policy change, since the Russian armed forces have already adapted to the introduction of ground-based precision fires,” he said.
Mathieu Boulegue, a researcher at the Center for European Policy Analysis, said the policy change would allow Ukraine to “be more efficient when it comes to repelling attacks and pushing back preemptively.”
“It’s not a game changer, per se. It’s an add-on, a steroid, an extra booster for Ukraine to defend itself,” he said.
The US is joining the United Kingdom, France, Germany and several others in removing restrictions on how Ukraine uses the weapons it is given.
Before Biden gave the green light, Putin had made veiled nuclear threats to countries considering allowing Ukraine to strike Russia with their weapons. He warned the move could lead to “serious consequences,” particularly for “small and densely populated countries.”
As well as making nuclear threats, Putin also signaled earlier this month that he was open to peace talks.
“All of these false narratives deliberately aimed to discourage Western decisionmakers from allowing Ukraine to preempt Russia’s attack on Kharkiv city,” Stepanenko said.
While the removal of this taboo appears to mark a new chapter in the war, Russia has previously experienced Ukrainian strikes with Western weapons on territory it considers its own.
Ukraine has frequently targeted occupied Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, using “Storm Shadow” missiles provided by the UK.
Ukraine also launched strikes on Kharkiv and Kherson in late 2022, as it sought to liberate the regions occupied by Russia in the early weeks of the full-scale invasion.
In both cases, Russia had warned Ukraine and its Western allies not to cross its red line. In both cases, Ukraine and its Western allies ignored the warning.
“The Kremlin already regards strikes against occupied Crimea and Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia oblasts as ‘strikes against Russia,’ but the reality is that there are few things that Russia can do to further escalate its war in Ukraine without incurring major risks,” Stepanenko said.
CNN’s Alex Marquardt, Jennifer Hansler, Kylie Atwood, Niamh Kennedy and Anna Chernova contributed reporting.
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