Now Trump May Be Jailed for His Alleged Crimes
It appeared during Trump’s rule that everybody around him in the Trump Administration was a crook like Trump.
By Rakesh Raman
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has ended the dark days of Trumptatorship (portmanteau for Trump and dictatorship) by defeating incumbent Donald Trump in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
While Biden will be inaugurated as the 46th U.S. president in January 2021, it is not a normal victory because Biden has stopped Trump’s criminal strides as he was hell-bent to reduce the American democracy to a third-world autocratic state.
Inspired by his mentor Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump had demolished almost all democratic institutions in the country to act as an absolute dictator.
Putin had allegedly helped Trump win 2016 presidential election deceptively. But perhaps because of his reported sickness, the Russian autocrat could not help Trump in this election. Result: Trump lost the election.
But loss of election should not be the only punishment for Trump. Rather, he must face the legal consequences for the multiple cases which were abruptly stopped during his presidency.
People ask me if we should hold Trump accountable for his countless crimes and endless corruption after he leaves office. YES—we have to. We will. We also need to change the presidential pardon laws so this kind of abuse never happens again.
— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) December 24, 2020
In fact, U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal decides to hold Trump accountable for his “crimes and corruption” after he leaves office. “People ask me if we should hold Trump accountable for his countless crimes and endless corruption after he leaves office. YES—we have to. We will. We also need to change the presidential pardon laws so this kind of abuse never happens again,” Ms Jayapal tweeted on December 24.
During his 4-year tenure, Trump proved that he was above the law because all the American laws had succumbed to Trump’s blatant refusal to obey them.
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First he refused to appear before the special counsel Robert Mueller who was investigating his ties with Russia to steal the 2016 presidential election. Instead of insisting on Trump’s appearance, Mueller ignored Trump’s refusal and submitted a sketchy report that was dumped without proper discussion.
Then Trump was caught red-handed when he was forcing Ukraine to implicate his Democratic presidential rival Joe Biden in a frivolous corruption case.
When the House of Representatives – the lower house of the United States Congress – started impeachment proceedings against Trump, he obstructed the impeachment inquiry by refusing to provide related documents and also stopped witnesses from participating in the impeachment hearings.
The House had passed 2 articles of impeachment: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. But Trump has no respect for any law and he kept behaving as a dictator. While his trial was supposed to begin in the Senate, Trump had issued the diktat for the Republican Senators to end the trial without proper investigation.
Trump showed the same disrespect for law when he was asked to show his tax details. Despite repeated attempts, the U.S. Congress as well as the courts failed to direct Trump to share his personal and business tax returns while it is largely believed that the wealth that Trump possesses is not clean.
Moreover, Trump – whose identity appears in criminal investigation documents as “Individual 1” or the unindicted co-conspirator in cases of crime and corruption – kept cheating Americans with his constant lies and vulgarity.
In his friend-cum-lawyer Michael Cohen’s case, Trump is called “Individual 1” in the charges filed by special counsel Robert Mueller who was leading a judicial team to know the extent of Trump-Russia ties that allegedly helped Trump win the 2016 presidential race.
It is also being conjectured that there are a number of dishonest politicians – who were earlier cursing Trump – were blackmailed to support Trump’s autocracy because of their secret links with sex offender and Trump’s friend Jeffrey Epstein.
Although it is said that Epstein committed suicide in the jail, rumors also suggest that he was murdered with the fear that he might spill the beans about top American politicians. A few weeks before his death in July 2019, Epstein was found unconscious in his jail cell with injuries on his neck. A new YouTube show sheds more light on the Epstein case.
Biden says that his first priority as the President will be to contain coronavirus. But it will be equally important for him to kill the virus of hate and corruption that Trump has spread across the American administrative systems. It appeared during Trump’s rule that everybody around him in the Trump Administration was a crook like Trump.
But the weak American justice system could not remove Trump from office with the argument that a President can’t be indicted. But now after losing the presidency, Trump can be indicted and imprisoned.
By Rakesh Raman, who is a national award-winning journalist and social activist. He is the founder of a humanitarian organization RMN Foundation which is working in diverse areas to help the disadvantaged and distressed people in the society.
