America will never heal until Donald Trump is held accountable

Is Donald Trump headed to victory in Tuesday’s U.S. election — or is he headed to jail?

The first part is easy.

Even if many Americans spend this weekend hiding under their beds in fear of what voters will do, all major polls indicate that Democratic candidate Joe Biden will win a clear victory.

So, in the absence of anything else to do, I say: let’s relax, walk our dog and play with our kids.

But the second part of this question — will Trump eventually end up behind bars — is more complicated.

Getting rid of Trump as president is only the first step.

Undoing the horrific damage of his deadly presidency will be more difficult.

And even more challenging will be to rid the American body politic of the insanity that brought to power what will be remembered as the worst presidency in modern American history.

How did this happen in the world’s leading democracy? And how can it be prevented from happening again?

The United States will never fully recover from the Trump presidency until he and the forces that enabled him are held legally accountable for the corruption and criminality they fostered.

For American society to heal, it will need to discover some semblance of truth and reconciliation to erase the shame of this proud country’s past four years.

Internationally, there are past models that can point the way.

We have seen similar transformations in countries such as South Africa after the collapse of racist apartheid, in Argentina after the military’s so-called “dirty war” against its opponents in the 1970s, and in Canada after the scandalous treatment of Indigenous people.

After next week’s U.S. election, we can expect there will be a burst of public enthusiasm for a Biden victory, and that will be genuine.

But something more dramatic and enduring will ultimately be necessary to make America’s fractured society whole again.

A starting point will be the question of Donald Trump’s guilt:

Will he face prosecution for his crimes?

Many U.S. legal analysts believe there are several potential charges that could be laid against Trump based on his activities before becoming President, as well as his behaviour since 2017 while in office.

Some involve federal charges which would be vulnerable to possible presidential pardons, but several potential crimes are at the state level that are immune from this type of intervention.

There are many cases that are potential time-bombs for Trump, but here are four of them:

Obstruction of Justice: There are several episodes listed in the Mueller report in which Trump may have obstructed justice in the inquiry about his Russian connections. Once he is no longer President, he is liable to prosecution.

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Tax Fraud: For years, Trump has refused to make public his income tax returns, and recent disclosures by the New York Times have shown why. On both the federal level and in the State of New York, there is increasing evidence of tax fraud.

Campaign Finance Violations: Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen was sentenced to more than three years in prison for a crime that was also linked to Trump. Why wouldn’t Trump, once a private citizen, suffer the same fate?

Negligent Homicide: By the time Trump leaves office, more than 400,000 Americans are expected to be dead from the pandemic, many of them avoidable deaths, according to medical specialists, if it wasn’t for Trump’s negligence. There are calls now that Trump should be charged with negligent homicide.

It is assumed that Joe Biden himself, after becoming President, would be personally reluctant to see his predecessor prosecuted. But the public pressure on Biden “to let justice prevail” in some sort of non-partisan way could very well be too intense for him to resist.

Given that, what could Trump do to avoid the humiliating prospect of winding up in jail once he is a private citizen again?

He has several options, but most of them are long shots.

Before the inauguration of a new president on January 20, he could resign and have his successor, the current vice-president Mike Pence, pardon him from any federal prosecution.

More than three years ago, I predicted in this column that this is how his presidency will end, so I have a certain wistful attachment to this scenario. And I see that Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, said recently he believes this will happen.

For what it’s worth, if you believe that history repeats itself, this is how Trump’s hero, Richard Nixon, ended his collapsing presidency in 1974.

Trump could also try to pardon himself — and his family members, while he’s at it — which he believes a U.S. president is empowered to do. But that has never happened before, and it would only affect federal charges, so it would be a constitutional gamble.

A final option, of course, is for Trump to risk the possibility of prosecution on the assumption that he would be found innocent of all charges.

But, sadly for him, most legal analysts who have examined the powerful case that would be built against Trump don’t see his potential “innocence” as a viable legal option. American juries don’t live in the same fact-free, alternative universe that Trump and his supporters do.

So, where does that leave us? Happily, it means that in both political and personal terms, time may finally be running out on Donald J. Trump.

Isn’t that reason enough for us to relax this weekend, walk our dog and play with our kids?

Tony Burman, formerly head of CBC News and Al Jazeera English, is a freelance contributing foreign affairs columnist for the Star. He is based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: , formerly head of CBC News and Al Jazeera English, is a freelance contributing foreign affairs columnist for the Star. He is based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @TonyBurman

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