What becomes of Trump once he leaves office?

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What becomes of Trump once he leaves office?

Post by Gaybutton »

Some are saying Trump will still be a very powerful force within the Republican party once he leaves office. If the following article is correct, I'm not so sure. He will no longer have the protection of "presidential immunity from prosecution" as a private citizen and the statutes of limitations on several of his criminal issues will not have expired. According to the article, he is likely to face a barrage of both civil and criminal legal cases and if he is tried and convicted in the criminal cases he could very well land in prison. Even if he wants to retain influence, will he even have time to do that while trying to defend all the legality that he might be facing? Some of these states and prosecutors have no intention of playing games. Maybe, and we don't know if it would be upheld, he can pardon himself from federal crimes, but he cannot pardon himself from state crimes.

I'm wondering if he really would leave the country as he has strongly hinted? If he wants to leave the country, where would he, or could he, go? Could he be charged with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution? Would the new State Department revoke his passport? What country would even want him? I'll bet not Russia. He would no longer be useful to Putin. Wouldn't it be fun to find him in Pattaya immigration applying for a retirement or Elite visa - and getting rejected?

The end of the article suggests Trump could make a deal with Mike Pence - Trump resigns the presidency and since Pence would then become president, albeit for a very short time, he pardons Trump. I think that's a little farfetched. Why would Pence do it? What would be in it for him? He would be destroying his own political career. Of course, Pence would go up a whole buncha-lotta notches with me if he does indeed make that deal, and then when Trump resigns now Pence reneges and refuses to pardon him. You know that really warm location down below that Pence believes is real? I'd love for him to tell Trump to go there . . .

Do you agree or disagree with the article?
_______________________________________________________

Out of office, President Trump could face new legal vulnerabilities

Experts say he's lost a significant shield in ongoing investigations, lawsuits.

By Alexander Mallin and Aaron Katersky

November 11, 2020

President Donald Trump's loss in the 2020 election could serve to significantly complicate his efforts to fight off a host of lawsuits and investigations into himself and his company, forcing him to shed what has been one of his most effective legal shields for the past four years, according to legal experts.

While Trump certainly hasn’t escaped legal scrutiny during his time in office, his attorneys, in their efforts to delay or derail various investigations and cases, have repeatedly tried to claim the office of the presidency essentially granted him immunity. In several cases, the Justice Department has intervened on Trump's behalf, throwing its legal firepower behind his personal defense attorneys.

Upon departing office on Jan. 20, Trump would have to shift that strategy as he faces the new reality of managing his defenses as a private citizen, both with respect to pending civil cases, as well as investigations which could have both civil and criminal implications.

“There's no question that there are a number of active investigations that could implicate Donald Trump: private citizen, and lead to his indictment and prosecution,” said attorney Richard Ben-Veniste, a former top prosecutor on the Watergate Special Prosecution Force that investigated former President Richard Nixon.

Experts questioned, however, the likelihood of any federal investigation into Trump being launched given the extraordinary political fallout that could come as a result. Nearly all of the current legal threats Trump could face are not criminal in nature and charging a former president with a crime is unprecedented.

Investigations in New York

One of the more significant potential legal threats Trump could face is from Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, who opened an investigation more than a year ago into Trump’s personal and business finances.

The case started over payments to women who had alleged affairs with Trump, that he later denied through a White House spokesperson.

The office has not spelled out clearly what specific allegations of wrongdoing it is investigating, but Vance sought, through a subpoena, eight years’ worth of Trump’s tax returns.

Last year, the president resisted the subpoena claiming, that as a sitting president, he could not be criminally investigated.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently rejected the broad immunity claim that the president’s attorneys asserted.

The DOJ, on Trump’s behalf, then asserted in federal court that the subpoena was too broad and amounted to political harassment. Just last month, a three-judge panel rejected that claim. The government has sought review with the Supreme Court, which is now considering that petition.

New York Attorney General Letitia James separately announced in August that she was investigating whether Trump and the Trump Organization improperly manipulated the value of certain assets to secure loans and obtain tax benefits to which they otherwise would not have been entitled.

The investigation includes questions about involves at least four properties, including the Seven Springs estate in Westchester, New York originally built by Eugene Meyer, a former publisher of the Washington Post. James is investigating the estate's conservation easement, otherwise known as a legal agreement that limits use of land for conservation purposes, and whether it was inflated "for the purpose of taking a larger tax deduction that would otherwise have been permitted," a lawyer in the attorney general's office said in August.

The president’s son, Eric Trump, who is currently running the business, sat for a deposition in the investigation last month. ABC News has also learned several key members of the president's company, the Trump Organization, also sat for deposition with James' office. The Trump Organization has denied any wrongdoing.

Benefitting from the presidency?

Attorneys general in both Washington, D.C., and Maryland have an ongoing lawsuit against Trump alleging he unlawfully used the office of the presidency to benefit his personal finances.

Their suit accuses Trump of violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which prohibits accepting gifts from foreign governments, with the attorneys general specifically citing foreign patrons to Trump’s hotel in the nation’s capital and other properties.

The U.S. Department of Justice Trump sued to block investigators efforts to subpoena Trump-related businesses his business and appealed for the Supreme Court to intervene, but the court has not yet decided whether to take up the case.

Defamation lawsuits from sexual misconduct accusers

The president is being sued for defamation by two women who have alleged they were sexually assaulted by Trump, Summer Zervos and E. Jean Carroll.

There are no criminal charges associated with either case and statutes of limitations have long since expired.

Zervos was a contestant on “The Apprentice” who alleged Trump groped her in a Beverly Hills, California, hotel on two occasions in 2007.

Carroll, a former Elle advice columnist, alleged he raped her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.

Trump has denied both accusations, but in those denials, the women said he defamed them.

The president has unsuccessfully tried to argue he is immune from such lawsuits while in office and the Justice Department sought to intervene in the case brought by Carroll, but that effort was recently rejected by a federal judge.

The Justice Department tried to substitute for Trump as the defendant in the defamation case, citing a law that shields federal employees from liability for conduct committed in the course of their jobs. A federal judge rejected the attempt after Carroll’s attorneys had argued Trump made the allegedly defaming statements outside the scope of his job as president.

The Justice Department has not said whether it will appeal the judge's order.

Michael Cohen, the 'hush money' affair and the SDNY

Another potential legal issue for Trump is a case related to the “hush money” payments to women who have alleged affairs with Trump. The payments were arranged by the president's then attorney Michael Cohen.

As a part of his August 2018 guilty plea with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York, among the charges to which he pleaded guilty, Cohen said he acted at the direction of then-candidate Trump when he made a payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels and arranged with a media company to pay former Playboy model Karen McDougal for her story.

Prosecutors said the payments were part of an illegal campaign finance scheme and Cohen said buying their silence was "for the principal purpose of influencing the election."

Cohen told the court that he made the arrangements for those hush money deals “in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office,” referring to then-candidate Trump.

The plea agreement memorably identified Trump as “Individual 1,” raising the specter that Trump might be considered an unindicted co-conspirator in the case, and whether, when he no longer has the protection of the presidency, prosecutors might want to pursue a case against him.

It’s not clear whether the Justice Department, under new leadership, might seek to revisit the matter, following Trump’s exit from the White House, though Harvard law professor Mark Tushnet told ABC News he would be “shocked” if they did so.

“There's no question that he's at legal risk and probably, in some sense, substantial legal risk, sort of, on the merits,” Tushnet said. “But you have to take into account the standard language is ‘prosecutorial discretion’ about which well-founded charges you decide to bring and I think it would be a very bad exercise of discretion to bring charges against him.”

Trump's tax bill

In September, the New York Times reported on more than two decades worth of tax return data for the president. According to the article, the IRS was zeroing in on a $72.9 million tax refund Trump applied for and received in 2010.

The Times said the data they obtained also showed Trump has a $100 million tax payment coming due in 2022 and more than $100 million more that he would be forced to pay the IRS should he lose his dispute over the 2010 refund.

While Trump and his attorneys have broadly denied the veracity of the Times investigation, they have not denied specific details related to the audit or the tax bills coming due and instead accused the paper of offering a “selective picture” of Trump’s tax payments.

Political dangers of prosecuting Trump and questions of a 'self-pardon'

Legal experts who spoke to ABC News said it’s possible the Justice Department, under new leadership, would consider investigating Trump if prosecutors see potential federal violations surface through the ongoing or other state investigations.

During the campaign, Biden said such a prosecution against a former president would be “probably not very good for democracy” but added he would not intervene if such a case was brought against Trump.

“The Justice Department is not the president's private law firm,” Biden said in August. “The attorney general is not the president's private lawyer. I will not interfere with the Justice Department's judgment of whether or not they think they should pursue the prosecution of anyone that they think has violated the law.”

Such a politically fraught decision, then, would instead likely be in the hands of Biden’s eventual pick for attorney general -- weighing whether to mount a public case against an individual who netted more than 71 million votes in the most recent presidential election.

“I would expect that they would take that into consideration even without the numbers and nature of the support for Trump just because it’s always been thought of to be more of a banana republic thing for the incoming administration to prosecute the outgoing administration,” said Daniel Richman, a law professor at Columbia Law School. “I don’t think it’s just about voters, I think it’s also about norms and expectations of a peaceful and straightforward transitions.”

A separate conversation in legal circles is whether Trump might seek to neutralize any potential for a federal investigation by preemptively pardoning himself before leaving office.

During the fast-moving developments of the Russia investigation in 2018 Trump tweeted he had “the absolute right to PARDON myself,” though such a move has not been constitutionally tested before.

In bolstering the idea Trump could preemptively pardon himself, experts point both to Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon before he was charged with a crime as well as a 19th century ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court where it held that a pardon "may be exercised at any time after" the commission of a crime, "either before legal proceedings are taken or during their pendency or after conviction or judgment."

“There's no language in the Constitution explicitly prohibiting a self-pardon,” Tushnet, the Harvard law professor, said. “But of course there is a sort of background principle that no person should be a judge in his or her own case and a self-pardon clearly is inconsistent with that principle.

“You'd have to have a lot of confidence that the pardon would stick because if he does it and it doesn't stick the mere doing of it would be part of a case against him,” Richman said.

A separate theory legal experts raised is that Trump could resign in the days before Jan. 20 and Vice President Mike Pence, assuming the powers of the presidency, would instead extend Trump a full pardon.

Such a move, however, would not extend to any state charges Trump might eventually face.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/office- ... d=74116717
Jun

Re: What becomes of Trump once he leaves office?

Post by Jun »

I imagine Trump will have a battle to keep his indebted business empire alive.

Also, next time these people meet, I suspect it's going to be less fun.

Image

[I was in primary school when one of them was President. Time flies.]
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Re: What becomes of Trump once he leaves office?

Post by Captain Swing »

Jun wrote: Thu Nov 12, 2020 6:08 am Also, next time these people meet, I suspect it's going to be less fun.
I'm not exactly sure what you mean. I think when they next get together (at the Biden inauguration?) they're going to laugh their heads off, contemplating Trump's richly deserved comeuppance. They all despise him, even Bush, and rightfully so.
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Re: What becomes of Trump once he leaves office?

Post by Up2u »

Captain Swing wrote: Thu Nov 12, 2020 7:45 am
Jun wrote: Thu Nov 12, 2020 6:08 am
Also, next time these people meet, I suspect it's going to be less fun.


I'm not exactly sure what you mean. I think when they next get together (at the Biden inauguration?) they're going to laugh their heads off, contemplating Trump's richly deserved comeuppance. They all despise him, even Bush, and rightfully so.
These are living ex-presidents, do you think they will be smiling if Trump were there?
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Re: What becomes of Trump once he leaves office?

Post by Gaybutton »

Up2u wrote: Thu Nov 12, 2020 8:31 am They all despise him, even Bush, and rightfully so.
I would think not "even Bush", but especially Bush. Remember how Trump viciously insulted his brother, Jeb Bush, during those debates?

I just hope the lawsuit plaintiffs and the prosecutors don't let Trump off the hook. I hope the Trump supporters finally will come around and see Trump for what he is, not that I'm holding my breath.
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Re: What becomes of Trump once he leaves office?

Post by Dodger »

At first glance, it appears as if the picture of past Presidents above was taken right after the election results were announced last week... :lol:

As expected (by everyone), the next 70 days will be more of Dickheads theatrics and hyperbole aimed at creating chaos and confusion to mask his defeat - and cast himself as "victim" as he's spent a lifetime doing.

I imagine Dickhead will silently disappear from the White House a week or two before the inauguration and set up camp in Mar-a-Lago. Retaining U.S. Federal Secret Service Security after he's left office, as all past Presidents do, may make it a bit uncomfortable for him. If by chance he ever wanted to leave the country, for any reason, the Secret Service, and the White House, would know his every movement. Attempting to go into exile to escape criminal charges for instance would be impossible under these circumstances, seeing as the Secret Service officers report directly to the U.S. State Department.

Not only was U.S. Intelligence concerned about Dickhead posing a threat to national security while he held office, but once he leaves office, their concerns will actually amplify due to Dickhead's knowledge of top secret military information, cyber capabilities, espionage tactics/deployment, etc., and of course his loose-lips. Keeping the courts from bankrupting him may be the least of his problems - as compared to him leaking top secret information after leaving office...unless he thinks he can hide better than Osama Bin Laden.

The good news is that Biden has immediate plans to re-join NATO, the Paris Climate Accord, and other international organizations that Dickhead turned his back on, as well as save (and improve) the Affordable Care Act so 20 million Americans don't lose their insurance coverage for preexisting conditions. Apparently, the Supreme Court has already showed signs of rejecting the Republicans bid to abolish the Plan. This might have something to do with the fact that Dickhead never established an alternate Plan.

Unfortunately, at least the way I see it, the root cause of the main problem with the U.S. government will still be there after Dickhead has left office. Totally polarized Senate - engaged in constant political warfare - total gridlock. In this regard, I agree with the Trump supporters. Something has to be done to change this. Trump was just not the right person to do it. Maybe Biden can chip away at the block. Only time will tell.
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Re: What becomes of Trump once he leaves office?

Post by Gaybutton »

Dodger wrote: Thu Nov 12, 2020 12:02 pm once he leaves office, their concerns will actually amplify due to Dickhead's knowledge of . . .
Once he leaves office? I'm concerned about all of that now. I shudder to think about how much more damage he can do, and very likely will do, before he is out of office.

Also, for a very simple reason I don't think you should call him a Dickhead. Why? Because it is much too complimentary. The English language needs to come up with a whole new word to describe how low he is - and obviously will continue to be.

From among all the words I have heard Biden say, the 10 words that stand out most in my mind are what he said at the debate: "You're the worst president the United States has ever had." That's one thing I really like about Joe Biden - he tells the truth . . .
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Re: What becomes of Trump once he leaves office?

Post by Dodger »

Gaybutton wrote: Thu Nov 12, 2020 12:41 pm The English language needs to come up with a whole new word to describe how low he is - and obviously will continue to be.
Yes, this has even left Webster tongue-tied.

An analysis by USA Today published in June 2016 found that over the previous three decades, Donald Trump had been involved in a mind-blowing 3,500 law suits in U.S. federal courts and state courts. In further reading, Trump was described as sometimes suing people and/or businesses just for revenge, and even just for "Sport". What word in the English language could possibly describe a person of his nature?

Multitudes of psychologists who have analyzed Trumps behavior patterns over the years have all described him as exhibiting definite traits of a psychotic narcissist, who, by their very nature, are extremely vengeful when their inflated egos get damaged or threatened. This is the scary part.

As you alluded to before regarding how much damage he could inflict on the government before leaving office, this has to have everyone in Washington putting their hands over their eyes and looking for a bed to hide under. There's literally no limit to what he will do now that he's lost the election. He's already started firing people with high-level civilian posts in the Pentagon, officials at the Department of Homeland Security (see link below), berating his top advisors and legal counsel, and has everyone in the Government, including U.S. Intelligence, the House, and the Senate, shitting in their pants. The White House cook is probably ducking for cover.

Not putting anything past this deranged psycho, I wouldn't be surprised if he fired Pence just out of spite. Is that even possible?

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/12/poli ... index.html
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Re: What becomes of Trump once he leaves office?

Post by Gaybutton »

Dodger wrote: Fri Nov 13, 2020 8:29 am What word in the English language could possibly describe a person of his nature?
I can think of only one: Hitler

Regarding Pence, Trump can't fire him, but he doesn't need to. He can do what he has always done with Pence since the beginning - just use him when it is advantageous for him and ignore him the rest of the time.

At the time of this post it has been only 10 days since the election. Look at how much damage he has already done. And it is 68 days until Biden's inauguration.

It is as if Trump is now at war with his own country. Maybe he really is. And Putin is probably loving every second of it. Meanwhile there doesn't seem to be a damned thing anybody can, or will, do to stop him. Like I said: Hitler!
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Re: What becomes of Trump once he leaves office?

Post by Dodger »

Gaybutton wrote: Fri Nov 13, 2020 9:41 am
I can think of only one: Hitler
The link below is an Analysis of Hitler prepared by the CIA during WWII, and approved for release from the O.S.S. Archives in 1999.

If you read pages 3-4 of the analysis, you'll think this was written in 2020 about Trump.

Hitler took his own life to avoid being captured and accepting defeat. Of course he took his family, including the family dog, along with him, leaving his captured followers to fend for themselves.

Trump's (aka Dickhead's) recent firings of staff in the Pentagon and Homeland Security must have U.S. Intelligence working overtime. One would imagine they're tracking his every movement like flies on shit.

And this is the person that 70 million Americans think would be a good President?????????????????

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom ... 0002-2.pdf
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