Criminal or Unethical Behavior Committed While in OfficePart I of our series on the most criminal, unethical president in American history focused on Donald Trump’s behavior before becoming president. Our conclusion was that there was more than enough smoke to ignite a fire that would prevent this man from ever taking the oath of office. However, the American voter was willing to overlook his prior bad acts, his racist business dealings, fraudulent business practices, shoddy financial dealings (6 bankruptcies and a chronic problem with paying contractors and employees fairly), hiring undocumented immigrants and mistreating them, and an ungodly number of sexual misconduct charges.
Part II of our series will focus on an even more serious pattern of misbehavior. Donald Trump committed multiple illegal or unethical acts while running for president and while serving as president of the United States. After taking the oath of office, Trump repeatedly betrayed his oath and his country. The American people once punished him and voted him out of office. When It comes to Trump, the 2020 vote was, perhaps, the only time the American people did the right thing.
1. Let’s begin there. Donald Trump’s worst behavior as president occurred after Joe Biden soundly beat him in 2020. Trump refused to concede the election and engaged in a criminal conspiracy to overturn it. The result was the insurrection of January 6, 2021. His behavior on that day and the days leading up to it was so outrageous, a congressional investigation ensued.
Because of the highly partisan political climate we live in (caused primarily by Trump) the congressional committee had difficulty staffing the committee with Republicans. Two brave Republicans, Adam Kissinger and Elizabeth Cheney, accepted committee appointments and signed off on the committee’s findings. The pair is no longer in Congress.
While the voters inexplicably forgave Trump’s part in the insurrection, history will not treat him kindly. The January 6th Committee determined that the sitting president criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol. Their public report concluded an extraordinary 18-month investigation into the president’s conduct and the violent insurrection that occurred on that fateful day.
The 814-page report detailed the results, after 10 hearings, more than 1,000 witness interviews, and an accumulation of more than a million pages of documents. The witnesses —Trump’s closest aides, law enforcement officers, and even some rioters — detailed premeditated actions by Trump in the weeks leading to the attack on the Capitol. The report concluded that the president engaged in wide-ranging efforts to overturn his defeat, which directly influenced those who brutally pushed past the police and smashed through the windows and doors of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The insurrection threatened our democracy, caused millions in damages, serious injuries and death, and threatened the lives of lawmakers. These are not my words. These are the words of a committee that invested 18 months of its time investigating the incident. 4 deaths occurred that day—two were ruled the result of “natural causes,” one was ruled an accident, and the fourth was ruled a homicide. Donald Trump not only incited the mob with his rhetoric (“go down to the Capitol” and “fight like hell”), but he also spent the first three hours of the melee watching it on television and ignoring calls from his aides to call off the mob.
In a parallel investigation, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith indicted the president on criminal charges that included conspiracy, insurrection, and fraud. Considering that someone was murdered, the president could have faced felony murder charges—I’ve never understood why he didn’t. If any normal citizen engaged in such outrageous conduct, he or she would be prison. In fact, many of those involved in the insurrection did go to prison. And Trump? Well . . . you may remember that his pals on the United States Supreme Court gave him immunity because his acts were committed while in office. Surely America would repudiate an insurrectionist felony murderer, regardless of Scotus’s terrible ruling.
Nope!
We the people elected him president! You must hand it to the guy—who else could have pulled that off? And what was the first thing he did when he returned to the oval office? He pardoned all the “patriots” involved in the January 6th insurrection, mayhem, and murder.
How stupid are we?
2. So much misbehavior, so much time passed, perhaps you have forgotten the Russia–Trump election interference and collusion scandal. The Mueller investigation (2017–2019) and report found no evidence of a criminal conspiracy between Trump and Russia, though it confirmed extensive Russian interference and contacts involving members of Trump’s campaign. Wikipedia+1Wikipedia+1. The distinction is dubious—the buck usually stops at the top. The Steele Dossier includes unverified claims (e.g., “golden showers” kompromat, campaign coordination), with parts corroborated—but the major claims against Trump remain unsupported.
3. The Trump–Ukraine scandal of 2019 resulted in his impeachment by the House. The Senate acquitted him.. Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden by threatening to withhold millions in military aid. His behavior may have reached the level of criminal abuse of power and bribery, but the DOJ declined to prosecute. We will discuss DOJ complicity in Trump’s misbehavior later in this series.
4. Trump engaged in similar conduct during a call with the Georgia secretary of State, following the 2020 election, one more effort to overturn the election results. You may recall that on January 2, 2021, Trump phoned Brad Raffensperger and asked the secretary to find him 11,780 votes. This could arguably be interpreted as corruption, election interference, exerting undue influence, or obstruction. The Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision blasts all of this to hell, but it doesn’t excuse the president’s dishonest and unethical behavior.
5. Trump’s mishandling of classified documents as he was leaving the White House would be terrible if done by any other president, but in the context of the bad things this president has done, it pales in comparison. A grand jury charged him with 40 criminal counts, including willful retention of national defense information, making false statements, and conspiracy to obstruct justice. And he was guilty, caught red-handed, as the saying goes. The problem? We re-elected him president, and the government prefers not to bring criminal charges against a sitting president. Furthermore, the Supreme Court’s immunity decision probably shoots down this misbehavior, too.
What a horrible decision!
The precedent set by SCOTUS to curry favor with Trump will haunt this country for decades into the future as the justice system tries to hold future criminal presidents responsible for acts committed while in office.
I probably missed a few Trump ‘lapses of judgment’, but you get the idea. Since his first case of public mischief, his racist Real Estate case at the tender age of 27, Donald Trump has engaged in a pattern of unethical, criminal, and fraudulent behavior, including while serving as president of the United States. He’s a convicted felon. Civil juries found him guilty of fraud, sexual misconduct, rape, and obstruction. Why would we the people vote for a man like this? Fake news? Witch hunt? Political retribution? Who knows? But Trump convinced enough voters to give him a pass on all his criminal and unethical behavior, even though it has cost at least one life and ‘we the taxpayers’ millions of dollars.
In Part III of our series, we’ll discuss how Congress, the Department of Justice, two Attorneys General, the press, and the voters enabled and emboldened the most criminal unethical president in American history. Without the unlikely and unintentional collaboration of these four entities, Donald Trump would, today, be on the outside looking in (probably in prison) and Kamala Harris would be president of the United States.
