![]() ![]() But in a pattern that has been central to his enduring impunity, the majority-Republican Senate worked as a bloc to let him off, with only one GOP senator voting to find him guilty on one of two counts-putting the vote well short of the 67 needed to convict. When: 2019–20 How He Got Away With It: The facts were relatively simple, and the House impeached Trump. ![]() The Scandal: Using congressionally appropriated funds, Trump tried to blackmail Ukraine into assisting his reelection campaign by announcing an investigation into Joe Biden’s son Hunter. Third, Special Counsel Robert Mueller was hobbled by a Justice Department policy against charging sitting presidents with crimes, and he seemed so determined to play his investigation by the book that he soft-pedaled the seriousness of his findings. Second, Trump critics overreached, becoming obsessed with sideshows, such as the Steele dossier or the campaign hanger-on Carter Page, that distracted from the core offense. When: 2016 How He Got Away With It: First, Trump left the dirty work to lieutenants, skipping (for example) the infamous Trump Tower meeting with Russian agents. The Scandal: Although Trump, as well as many people who ought to know better, insists that the story was a hoax, his campaign colluded with Russian agents during the 2016 campaign, hoping for some edge against Hillary Clinton. Many of the cases involved corners cut or laws bent to benefit his business, and the fines tended to represent a sliver of whatever revenue he’d made by way of the infraction. But more than anything, a pattern emerged of Trump managing to sidestep serious legal consequences by paying fines to dispose of regulatory headaches, civil lawsuits, and other matters, frequently without having to admit guilt or submit to any other penalties. When: 1973–2017 How He Got Away With It: You name it, he tried it: connections, luck, running out the clock, endless litigation. The Scandal: Too many to summarize, as I chronicled in a running tally before he was elected president, including housing discrimination, a scammy “university,” and sexual-assault and -harassment allegations going back decades. Still, as we await more information on the Mar-a-Lago search, the record reveals the maneuvers that have gotten Trump out of jeopardy in the past. In truth, the dichotomy is misleading: Though Trump has evaded the most serious legal consequences so far, he has paid a political price there’s a reason he’s the former president and very unpopular with the majority of Americans. This pattern has created an air of invincibility around Trump that can drive liberals to nihilistic fatalism and conservatives to hubris. This skill has birthed memes, including a reappropriation of the “ Teflon Don” moniker, well-deserved conservative mockery of premature political death warrants, and the immortal “ Ah! Well. On the other, many cases involving mishandled classified information end without charges-just ask Hillary Clinton-and some experts speculate that the goal of the search may simply have been to recover the documents rather than to build a criminal case against Trump.īut because this case is only the latest in a string of scandals, the question can’t be separated from a broader context: Trump’s repeated ability to escape the most serious, and sometimes any, consequences for his serial misbehavior. On the one hand, as both Trump’s allies and adversaries have noted, such a warrant on a former president is unprecedented, one of Trump’s lawyers reportedly told the government all files were returned prior to the search, and Trump has offered nonsensical defenses, all of which point to the seriousness of the situation. The question is in the air once more following the FBI’s seizure of top-secret documents from Mar-a-Lago last week. With each new scandal involving Donald Trump, the question arises again: Is this the one that will finally exact some pain on the former president? ![]()
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