Don't Let Donald Trump Confess—Expose Him First
That's how to thwart his plans and convince the public he did something disgraceful.
I wanted to make one more observation about the importance of “unmasking”1 Donald Trump.
It’s two observations, actually, but they go hand in hand.
Several readers responded to Friday’s piece by suggesting Trump may be breaking the law if indeed he’s calling in favors or promising policy deliverables in order to, e.g., persuade Saudi Arabia not to normalize relations with Israel before the election. And if he’s broken the law, the thinking goes, then it’s a matter for the Justice Department.
I don’t mean to quarrel with that, except to say in this instance “accountability” for Trump can’t and shouldn’t be confined to the criminal-law process, and to the extent public accountability and legal accountability are in tension, this time around the public’s right to know must take precedence. It would need to take precedence even if President Biden had a hard charging attorney general who’d press an aggressive case against Trump. Criminal investigations are secretive by design, and criminal cases are poor vehicles for public information. They yield charging documents and various other court pleadings on an irregular basis. And as we’ve seen over the past year, Biden, for ethical and normative reasons, is reluctant to say anything about Trump’s criminal exposure.
In other words: I doubt whether Merrick Garland will mount another criminal investigation of Trump before the election, but in either case, we should in no way prefer one to an aggressive public inquiry and exposure process. Alerting the public is imperative because that’s who Trump is ultimately trying to defraud, if and as he sabotages Biden’s diplomacy or otherwise subverts the 2024 election.
Exposing Trump is how Biden can pre-empt his predictable efforts to brazen his way through another betrayal of the United States. It’s also Biden’s best shot at preventing Trump’s schemes from working.
WHEN IT ‘KRAINES
Trump gets away with a lot of crimes and other bullshit by confessing to things his corrupt predecessors would’ve tried much harder to conceal.