Trumps Future: Nine Possibilities
As former President Donald Trumps second impeachment trial begins, it shines a light on a new reality: although its been nearly 100 days since Trump lost his re-election he is not going away, at least in the short term. What will become of Trump? Here are nine possible outcomes for Trumps futurethe first four possibilities keep him in the middle of national politics in the latter five, he would more likely fade away.
1. Leading the Trumpublican faction of the GOP
Over the course of four years as president, Trump masterfully consolidated Republican voters into a cult of personality. His hardcore supporters were willing to believe anything that left his lips, regardless of evidence to the contrary. They were willing to put their own lives at risk as he huddled them together at rallies and mocked those taking precautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19. They were willing to commit insurrection against their own government, all in his name and to support his lies about election malfeasance.
That non-trivial group of Republican and Republican-leaning voters is not going away, and they remain loyal not to the party but to Donald Trump. It remains to be seen exactly how large this group is, how much power they will wield in Republican primaries and whether a non-Trumpublican candidate can consolidate the remainder of the party.
2. Uniting MAGA to form a third party
Stories Chosen For You
Former Donald Trump lawyer Michael Cohen spoke with CNN’s Jim Acosta Saturday in a wide-ranging interview about the recent guilty plea involving Trump Org. CEO Allen Weisselberg and the documents found at Trump’s golf club.
Weisselberg, who has been with Trump for more than 40 years, pleaded guilty this week and agreed to spend 100 days in jail and testify against the Trump Organization, but not against the company’s boss. While Weisselberg is going to the infamous Rikers Island prison, he’ll only spend five months there. Cohen thinks he deserves much more.
Weisselberg will appear before the case in Oct. 2022. Cohen said that the most important question for the district attorneys team to ask is who directed him to do what he did.
“Every year, the personal financial statements increased, increased. Every year you had to file certain documents. Allen, you didn’t make these decisions. You didn’t have the authority, even as the CFO, to do anything without Donald Trump’s approval, plain and simple.
As for Mar-a-Lago, Cohen wanted to remind people that it isn’t Trump’s personal home. It’s a social club that Trump is using as his “home” instead of paying to buy his own property in Palm Beach.
“You may remember not too long ago, there was a Chinese dissent running around with a thumb drive and a bunch of other illegal things that they ended up taking her off the premise,” Cohen recalled. “It’s an unsecured location.”
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Searching For ‘the Right Remedy’
Democratic lawmakers are deeply divided over Trump.
The House select committee is presenting evidence that Trump was personally involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and as the former federal judge Michael Luttig testified, may try to do so again in 2024. But the decision about whether he broke the law falls to Attorney General Merrick Garland and his prosecutors.
One of the Democrats’ options would be to impeach Trump for a third time, even though they’ve twice fallen short of convicting him in the Senate, where a two-thirds supermajority is required to remove from office.
Senate Judiciary Committee member Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said he was unsure if another impeachment would even be possible given that Trump is no longer in office, but didn’t put too much stock in that anyway.
“I don’t know that impeachment would be the right remedy,” Blumenthal told Insider while walking to the Senate chamber. “I think more likely is some kind of criminal enforcement. And that’s why I need to hear the evidence.”
Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia immediately shut down any talk of a third impeachment trial when Insider asked, and actually made a case for reconsidering the last attempt.
But that moment has passed, Kaine said. “I’m not interested in Donald Trump anymore,” he said.
Senate Judiciary Committee member Chris Coons of Delaware said more Republicans would need to get on board with impeaching Trump in order to make another trial worthwhile.
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White House Staff Tried To Figure Out How To Get Docs Trump Had Taken To The Residence Before He Left Office: Report
As part of the report that the Justice Department would prefer not to release the methodology for the Mar-a-Lago search warrant, the New York Times revealed that former White House aides anticipated the documents problem.
In a tweet from Maggie Haberman, she explained that in the weeks leading up to Jan. 20, 2021, White House staff was trying to figure out how to get documents from Trump that he’d taken with him to the residence so that they could be properly stored. By then, however, the staff secretary, Derek Lyons, left and former chief of staff Mark Meadows said he’d handle it.
“…Meadows, the man who oversaw presidential records in the chaotic closing days of the administration, failed to organize an effort to collect, box and deliver materials to the National Archives as prior presidents, and Mr. Trumps own vice president, Mike Pence, did,” two sources with knowledge of the events said.
Trump’s lawyer, Patrick Philbin, also tried to get him to turn over the documents to the National Archives, but he resisted.
“It’s not theirs, it’s mine,” advisers told the New York Times Trump told them.
According to the Times, the final days of the Trump administration “instead, often focused on settling political grievances and personal grudges.”
The quote from the sources could also be an indication that Trump world intends to throw Meadows under the bus for the classified documents.
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Opposition To The Trump Administration
| Opposition to the Trump administration |
|---|
| Main page |
| Local opposition |
Days after the 2016 election, politicians, organizations, and others began to strategize about opposing Republican President Donald Trump‘s policies and administration. Some began focusing on direct opposition to Trump, his administration, and policies, while others began laying out plans for future elections.
This article is a chronicle of those activities and strategies and is organized by the entities opposing Trump’s policy agenda. Here you will find tactics for opposing the Trump administration from donor groups, members of Congress, the DNC, protesters and marchers, state governments, and local governments. This page was last updated in November 2017.
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Use Of The Office Of President
Trump often sought to use the office of the presidency for his own interest. Under his leadership, the Justice Department, which is traditionally independent from the President, became highly partisan and acted in Trump’s interest.Bloomberg News reported in October 2019 that during a 2017 Oval Office meeting, Trump had asked Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to pressure the Justice Department to drop a criminal investigation of Reza Zarrab, an Iranian-Turkish gold trader who was a client of Trump associate Rudy Giuliani. Tillerson reportedly refused.
Trump attempted to host the 2020 G7 Summit at his Doral Golf Resort, from which he could have made significant profits. Trump visited his properties 274 times during his presidency. Government officials were charged as much as $650 per night to stay at Trump’s properties.
In the lead up to the 2020 election, Trump and Postmaster GeneralLouis DeJoy, a close ally of Trump, sought to hamper the US postal service by cutting funding and services, a move which would prevent postal votes from being counted during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trump has fired, demoted or withdrawn numerous government officials in retaliation for actions that projected negatively on his public image, or harmed his personal or political interests, including Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey, Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire.
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The primary race dominated cable news coverage, and national correspondents descended on the state to cover her expected defeat. She will remain in her seat through the end of the year, meaning that she will continue to serve as vice chair of the January 6th Committee, scheduled to hold its second round of hearings in September.
Cheney also warned of potential political violence, as she condemned Trumps attacks on law enforcement following the search of his Mar-A-Lago property last week. Trump suggested that FBI agents planted documents in the boxes they retrieved, including those marked as classified.
Donald Trump knows that voicing these conspiracies will provoke violence and threats of violence. This happened on January 6th and it is now happening again. It is entirely conceivable that the violence will escalate further, yet he and others continue, purposely, to feed the danger. She noted threats made against law enforcement and the federal magistrate judge in the case, and despite knowing all of this, Donald Trump recently released the names of FBI agents involved in the search that was purposeful and malicious.
No patriotic American should excuse these threats or be intimidated by them, she said. Our great nation must not be ruled by a mob provoked over social media.
Harriet Hageman, a former Cheney supporter and Trump critic who nevertheless won the former presidents endorsement, was projected to win the race by a wide margin.
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Where Does The Senate Come In
The Senate is tasked with handling the impeachment trial, which is presided over by the chief justice of the United States in the case of sitting presidents. However, in this unusual case, since Trump is not a sitting president, the largely ceremonial task has been left to the Senate pro tempore, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the chamber’s most senior member of the majority party.
“The president pro tempore has historically presided over Senate impeachment trials of non-presidents,” Leahy said in a statement in January. “When presiding over an impeachment trial, the president pro tempore takes an additional special oath to do impartial justice according to the Constitution and the laws. It is an oath that I take extraordinarily seriously.”
To remove a president from office, two-thirds of the members must vote in favor at present 67 if all 100 senators are present and voting.
If the Senate fails to convict, a president is considered impeached but is not removed, as was the case with both Clinton in 1998 and Andrew Johnson in 1868. In Johnsons case, the Senate fell one vote short of removing him from office on all three counts.
In this trial, since the president has already left office, the real punishment would come if the president were to be convicted, when the Senate would be expected to vote on a motion to ban the former president from ever holding federal office again.
Winning The White House To Avoid Prison
Trump has made clear since his final days in office that he feared prosecution based on his actions leading up to and on Jan. 6. He was reportedly considering pardoning himself and his family before deciding against it, and was actually planning to be in Scotland at the moment of Joe Bidens inauguration, at one of his golf courses there, until the first minister of that country announced that he would not be welcome.
More recently, Trump told a rally audience: They want to put me in jail, before telling his followers that they should prepare to hold the biggest protests we have ever had in Atlanta, Washington and elsewhere.
The approach repeats Trumps pattern of attempting to delegitimize all investigations and investigators looking into his activities as corrupt and politically motivated. During his years in office, he called both the special counsel probe into the assistance his campaign received from Russia as well as the impeachment for his attempt to extort Ukraine a hoax, and got most Republicans to go along with it.
Whether that approach can work again is unclear. He is no longer the sitting president, and other Republicans are also seeking the 2024 nomination despite Trumps attempts to freeze out competitors.
One former top Trump White House official, though, said there was a difference between Jan. 6 coming up as a campaign issue and Trump personally facing an actual prosecution, and that the latter could wind up actually helping him.
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First Impeachment Of Donald Trump
| First impeachment of Donald Trump | |
|---|---|
| Members of House of Representatives vote on two articles of impeachment | |
| Accused | Donald Trump, President of the United States |
| Proponents | |
| Outcome | Acquitted by the U.S. Senate, remained in the office of President of the United States |
| Charges | |
| Voting in the U.S. Senate | |
| Accusation | Article I Abuse of power |
| Votes in favor | |
| Acquitted | |
| Accusation | Article II Obstruction of Congress |
| Votes in favor |
| A request by U.S. President Donald Trump to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate Joe Biden and his son sparked the scandal. |
| Events |
|---|
Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, was impeached for the first time by the House of Representatives of the 116th United States Congress on December 18, 2019. The House adopted two articles of impeachment against Trump: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The Senate acquitted Trump of these charges on February 5, 2020.
Two days after the acquittal, Trump fired two witnesses who had testified about his conduct in the impeachment inquiry: Ambassador Gordon Sondland and Alexander Vindman, together with Vindman’s twin brother Yevgeny.
Can Biden Transition Into Power Over Trumps Objections
Yes. Trump has only so much power to slow Bidens transition.
A law called the Presidential Transition Act of 1963 makes career civil servants vital to the transfer of power. They face deadlines for providing data and access to incoming officials.
Under the law, the transition process will shift into high gear once a federal agency called the U.S. General Services Administration , which manages federal buildings, names an apparent winner of the election. At that point, the incoming presidents team can obtain briefing books, tap into funds, and send representatives to visit government agencies.
On Sunday, experts in transitions sent a letter to the GSAs administrator, Emily Murphy, urging her to recognize Biden as the winner.
While there will be legal disputes requiring adjudication, the outcome is sufficiently clear that the transition process must now begin, the letter from the Center for Presidential Transition said.
The GSA said in a statement on Saturday it ascertains the apparent successful candidate once a winner is clear based on the process laid out in the Constitution.
Political scientists told Reuters they are optimistic about the resilience of this legal framework.
Despite the animosity between Trump and Biden on the campaign trail, the Trump administration earlier this year complied with statutory requirements for providing federal office space and government resources to the Biden campaign.
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An Idiots Guide To Running Trump Out Of Office
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Im not proud, dear reader, to be trafficking in #Resistance porn. Unfortunately, times have been tough, and my magnum opus marrying socialism, liberalism, conservatism, and populism with the best of Eastern and Western philosophy has, like Jared Kushners 666 Fifth Avenue, failed to win backing from Qatari investors. Like any businessman, I therefore turn to smut, which means Trump impeachment fantasies. Or to be precise, I shall speculate about the ouster of Donald Trump by means of the 25th Amendment. What would make his ouster legitimateenough so that even his supporters would assent to it?
Before we get to the dirty stuff, let me first offer some hypocritical, but sincere, disavowals. For the moment, ousting Trump by any means other than that of the ballot box would be terrible for the country. Preserving our democracy requires a minimum of good sportsmanship, meaning that if you lose, you dont just cancel the game. We can pretend that James Comey and Vladimir Putin were the primary causes of Trumps victory, causingHillary Clinton to pour vast sums into TV ads in Nebraska instead of Wisconsin or Michigan. We can hate the electoral college. But then we move on. Trump won by the rules.
Whether Documents Were Classified May Be Irrelevant
According to property receipt records, among the items seized from Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8 were three sets of records labeled either Confidential Document or Miscellaneous Confidential Documents three labeled Miscellaneous Secret Documents and four labeled Miscellaneous Top Secret Documents. One was listed as Various classified/TS/SCI documents, which stands for Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information.
Top secret is the highest level of classification because the classified information, if released, could cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security, as the National Archives explains on its Frequently Asked Questions page about the Information Security Oversight Office.
According to Executive Order 13526 issued in late 2009 by Obama, Confidential is the lowest category of classified information currently in use, while information whose release would cause serious damage is classified SECRET, and information whose release would cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security is classified TOP SECRET.
We still dont know the content of the documents, but their classification may be irrelevant to a possible case against Trump. None of the three laws cited as the predicate for the search and seizure warrant requires the documents be classified to run afoul of the law.
We cant tolerate a situation where national security information is being held in an unsecure location where our enemies could get at it, Gerstell said.
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