Why He Won't Leave

Trump's Crime Wave Continues: Requires Biden Special Prosectuor

by Ralph Nader

November 13, 2020

There are many reasons why loser Trump refuses to concede. Yes, delusion has been the counterfeit coin of his fantasy realm – “I won this election by a lot” he tweeted with all caps last Saturday. In his fevered mind – nourished by a bullying career – all victories are his triumphs, and all losses are fake due to fraud or theft. Unfortunately, for decades he has gotten away with all sorts of abuses, violations, and exaggerations.

Trump is now being told that the courts don’t agree with his desperate lawsuits brought by firms such as Jones Day, whose lawyers can’t resist the lucrative billings that client Trump generates. Trump is also seeing that Republican Senators are starting to distance themselves from their roles as dittohead minions. Even puppet Mike Pence is not parroting Trump’s wild, flailing fictions. 

All this bluster is, however, more than the fluster of a failed gambling czar going off the rails. There is lootings to be done. By refusing to concede Trump is raising millions of dollars from his supporters. Trump’s defiance also distracts the media from the Executive Branch that is on a rampage of wreckage and revenge garnished by profiteering that will fill the defeated President’s days until January 20, 2021.

The firing of top officials who strayed from Trump fuels his fulminating tweet machine. The first official to go was Secretary of Defense Mark Esper who opposed the use of the U.S. Army against the American people speaking freely in the streets. More officials are being removed and replaced by Trump’s hardliners. Installing “acting” high officials without Senate confirmation is Trump’s latest impeachable offense and should render the authority of these henchmen, illegal. Remember dictator Donald Trump has declared that “With Article II, I can do whatever I want as president.”

Trump and his outlaws can do serious damage before they get the boot in January. Expect that Trump and his cronies will do the following:

1. Destruction of or stealing documents, emails, transcripts, fabrications, and alterations of any incriminating evidence. House Committee Chairs have written a letter warning Trump that violating the Public Records Act is a federal crime. The Trumpsters laugh at Congress knowing that the House Democrats have declined to exercise their full power under the Constitution.
2. Expand the funneling of unexpended monies and unauthorized funds to favor corporate cronies and other interests pumping up the Trump family businesses.
3. Continue to defy over a hundred House subpoenas and demands for information. These subpoenas expire with the new Congressional session in January.
4. Issue Executive Orders illegally over-riding statutory requirements and establishing immediate benefits for his businesses and political friends.
5. Expand the repeal of existing regulation of corporations, no matter how administratively unlawful.
6. Drop pending court cases, and sign sweetheart settlements with corporate crooks without public disclosure. Attorney General Barr specializes in secret settlements. He may even close out grand juries, such as the one now investigating Boeing and its 737 MAX crimes.
7. Open further the floodgates of corporate subsidies, handouts, giveaways, and bailouts, including awarding leases and licenses corruptly to commercial interests.
8. Give contracts to favored companies and cronies and revoke other contracts awarded earlier to people Trump wants to punish.
9. Order his toady Attorney General to issue subpoenas for bogus vindictive purposes so as to stigmatize his critics and cause them legal costs.
10. Pardon or commute the sentences of large numbers of people, some of them worthy, for cover, and others who are Trump cronies wanting to avoid prosecution or prison terms. A seasoned escape artist from the law, Trump will want to pardon loyalists and his family members for any federal crimes and then figure out how to pardon himself. Trump might even resign so Mike Pence, can briefly become President and pardon Trump and collaborators.
11. Give the Presidential Medal of Freedom to odious characters, such as Rush Limbaugh, to curry favor and to reap future paybacks.
12. Make a living hell for Joe Biden’s transition teams to keep them from discovering Trump administration crime scenes and to impair the work of the new administration in a perilous age of Trump’s Covid-19 expanding casualty toll.

To those who shout, “He can’t legally do that.” Trump laughs and says – “so sue me, I’ve been pardoned and, anyhow, I’ve got six votes on the U.S. Supreme Court.” (He can’t, however, escape state criminal prosecutions as those rising in New York).

These Trumpian maneuvers must not deter Biden and his Attorney General from establishing a special Prosecutor Task Force to bring the Trumpsters to justice and assure that crime does not pay. Not doing this, as conservative columnist, Max Boot, sharply warned last July, would disastrously normalize presidential crimes in the future.

What Trump would like to do, health permitting is make tons of money from all his presidential favors, continue to control the GOP with mass rallies, mass media coverage, and his own media company, and run for president in 2024. He knows very well that despite his colossal, dangerous, lying, betraying, and wrecking of America in so many ways, (See our book, Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All) 70 million voters stayed with him.

Such is the historic default, at both the Congressional and state levels, of the corporatized, cowardly Democratic Party against the overtly worse Republican Party in 166 years!