Before Donald Trump criminalized the White House, Republican Party and perhaps the Supreme Court, he was the CEO of the Trump Organization — a fraudster, racketeer and patriarchal Boss of a family owned and operated criminal enterprise. He spent five decades in New York and beyond avoiding charges and prosecutions for sexual harassment, tax evasion, money laundering and nonpayment of employees.
If this wasn’t enough, Trump also busied himself by allegedly defrauding tenants, customers, contractors, investors, bankers, attorneys, students and charities, not to mention making use of undocumented workers.
In retrospect, Trump’s lifetime of lies and lawlessness appear to have prepared him for the fateful moment in which he now finds himself — in a court of law, answering for the first 34 of 88 felony counts that stem from alleged crimes he committed immediately before, during and after his presidency. Trials involving Trump’s alleged 2020 election interference and illegal retention of national secrets loom.
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As the fraudster-in-chief and Benedict Arnold of our time, Trump continues to maintain his innocence and blames everybody but himself while attempting to make a mockery of the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law.
In light of Trump’s defiance, and the potential for more illegal Trumpian interference during the 2024 election, in which he is almost certain to be the Republican Party’s nominee, now is a good time to go beyond Trump and explore the criminal culpability of Trump Crime Syndicate lieutenants and Trump’s kitchen cabinet of MAGA knaves and rogues.
These are the people who have aided and abetted Trump, and continue to assist him in his single-minded quest to become the most powerful man in America.
They are worth your attention precisely because of the danger to democracy that they represent.
Criminalizing the power of the pardon with the intent to defraud
At the federal level, a gaggle of powerful Republican actors were deeply involved in the plot to overturn the 2020 election in Trump’s favor. These include — and are not limited to — Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI).
At the state level, dozens of Republican fake electors and Trump stakeholders have been criminally indicted in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Nevada.
All of these criminal indictments for election interference like Trump’s indictments are “basically telling the same story of corruption and venality” except for their “different charges” according to Kenneth F. McCallion, a former Special Attorney and Assistant U.S. Attorney with the DOJ who also worked for the New York attorney’s general office as a prosecutor on Trump-related racketeering cases.
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But before proceeding further with this examination of presidential crime, politics and accountably, it is important to highlight Trump’s unprecedented usage of the pardon power, which facilitated the failed coup of Jan. 6, 2021, as well as Republican electioneering of 2024.
Prior to Trump, the presidential power of the pardon had always been about showing mercy and compassion. It was most certainly not a tool for rewarding criminal loyalty and weaponizing criminal conduct.
Excluding Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime “fixer” and former “partner in crime,” the Boss pardoned several of his other loyal associates, especially those within the Trump Crime Syndicate.
Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort arrives to his arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court, on June 27, 2019, in New York City. Manafort pleaded not guilty to mortgage fraud and other criminal charges filed by New York state authorities. (Photo by Yana Paskova/Getty Images)
For example, in relation to Russian election interference in 2016, Trump pardoned his former campaign manager Paul Manafort.
Revealed for the man he is in the 1992 Center for Public Integrity report The Torturers’ Lobby, Manafort in 2019 was found guilty in the Eastern District of Virginia of two counts of bank fraud, five counts of tax fraud and one count of failing to disclose an offshore bank account.
Manafort also pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the United States and to witness tampering in the federal District of Columbia. Most of these crimes were connected to his lobbying work in Ukraine.
Then, just days before his longtime friend and campaign adviser Roger Stone’s 48-month incarceration was scheduled to begin for seven felony convictions, including impeding a congressional inquiry, Trump commuted Stone’s sentence.
And when Trump was literally leaving the Oval Office and almost out the door, he granted clemency to his former chief political strategist Steve Bannon who had defrauded Trump donors out of more than $1 million to allegedly help build the border wall between the United States and Mexico.
Steve Bannon, former advisor to President Donald Trump, appears in Manhattan Supreme Court to set his trial date on May 25, 2023 in New York City. (Photo by Curtis Means-Pool/Getty Images)
Trump also pardoned retired Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the only one-time White House official to be convicted as part of the Trump-Russian investigation carried out by special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.
In the cases of both Stone and Flynn, Trump’s “forgiveness” cameafter Bill Barr, Trump’s third of five attorneys general, failed to shut down these investigations on the spurious grounds that these two perpetrators, Stone and Flynn, had been the victims of witch hunts and overzealous prosecutors.
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We have also known for nearly two years since former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony before a House select committee that the pardon power does not prohibit preemptive pardons. Nine members of Trump’s kitchen cabinet requested them in the wake of Jan. 6, demonstrating their full knowledge and intent of criminal wrongdoing.
Meanwhile, Manafort, Stone, Bannon, and Flynn are back supporting Trump’s 2024 campaign as they did in 2016 and 2020. And, Trump and Putin are closer than ever. The Russian president has even publicly endorsed him this time round . It didn’t hurt that Trump seemed to have Putin’s back most, if not, all the time since he took office. Trump opposing NATO as well as Ukraine helped as well. Trump’s pardoning his own men involved in the 2016 interference seemed to condone it. His illiberal authoritarian and anti-democratic credo was another plus.
Trump’s minions began their election interference in 2015 and never stopped
Let’s begin with the criminal prosecutions related to the 2016 Russian election interference investigated by Mueller.
Mueller’s investigation led to the indictments of 34 individuals and three Russian companies. Five Trump associates and campaign officials were convicted of felonies including those mentioned above. Mueller’s final report, while finding insufficient evidence of a Trump-Russian conspiracy, did conclude that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, and expected to benefit from Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Key players in the 2016 Russian collusion affair
- Paul Manafort (discussed above) according to the U.S. intelligence community was also believed to have passed internal Trump campaign and polling strategy information to Russian spy Konstantin Kilimnik.
- Rick Gates, a longtime business associate of Manafort and also a former Trump campaign official, was also charged in two separate federal courts and he too plead guilty to two counts of conspiracy against the United States, lying to federal prosecutors, financial crimes, and lobbying without a license.
- Michael Flynn was also pardoned by Trump and worked on the 2020 as well as the 2024 presidential campaigns. Since 2022 Flynn has had a ReAwaken roadshow with the Army of God for Trump. He was the first to plead guilty in 2017 after admitting that he made false statements and omissions in FBI interviews only days after Trump was sworn in to office. The former Army general “impeded and otherwise had a material impact on the FBI’s ongoing investigation into the existence of any links or coordination between individuals associated with the campaign and Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election.”
- Roger Stone (discussed above) was the subject of the video, The Roger Stone tapes, that reveals Stone working from the Willard hotel in D.C. with Giuliani and others, and quickly checking out while the riots were taking place.
- Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal attorney and “fixer” for more than a decade,pleaded guilty in a New York federal court to one count of making a false statement to Congress as well as to other crimes committed in his taxi related business in the Southern District of New York. He spent almost three years in prison serving time concurrently for both convictions.
Cohen and David Pecker are two of the key, among, many witnesses from Trump’s inner circle testifying against their former Boss in the New York presidential election interference case.
By contrast, defendant Trump has no witnesses on his behalf. He also has no family or friends except son Eric who showed up in court on April 30 for the first time. Otherwise surrounded by only his attorneys who are devoid of any facts and some twisted law, maybe, if they are lucky.
And through testimony on Friday the defense had scored no points during cross-examination that so far could create reasonable doubt.
2020 Election Interference as part of Trump’s Kitchen Cabinet
Former New York City Mayor and former personal lawyer for former President Donald Trump Rudy Giuliani talks to members of the press before he leaves the U.S. District Court on May 19, 2023 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Turning next to a review of three of the 2020 Trump election interference cases I do so without concern with the consequences for or accountability of the fake electors because none of these individuals were either affiliated with the Trump Crime Syndicate or members of the former president’s kitchen cabinet.
Although a number of them were or are elected state officials and high-ranking members of the Republican presidential campaigns of 2020 as well as 2024.
- Jeffrey Clark, DOJ unindicted co-conspirator, indicted in Georgia
- John Eastman, DOJ unindicted co-conspirator, indicted in Georgia and Arizona
- Rudy Giuliani, DOJ unindicted co-conspirator, indicted in Georgia, indicted in Arizona
- Jenna Ellis, convicted in Georgia, indicted in Arizona
- Sidney Powell, DOJ unindicted co-conspirator, convicted in Georgia
- Kenneth Chesebro, DOJ unindicted co-conspirator, convicted in Georgia
- Peter Navarro, convicted and in prison
- Steve Bannon, convicted and out on appeal
- Mark Meadows, DOJ witness, indicted in Georgia, indicted in Arizona
- Boris Epshteyn, unindicted co-conspirator in Georgia, indicted in Arizona
- An unidentified political consultant is also a DOJ unindicted co-conspirator
Nixon’s Watergate was ‘much ado about nothing’ compared to Trump’s failed coup and insurrection
To put Trump’s minions in perspective, a brief examination of President Richard Nixon’s henchmen is required.
In response to the criminal cover-up of the crimes involved in the attempted burglary of the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., on June 17, 1972. Nixon was named as an “unindicted co-conspirator” on March 1, 1974, by a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia. This was a wide conspiracy case that sent some of Washington’s biggest names at the time to prison.
Compared to Trump’s failed coup, Nixon’s Watergate break-in and cover-up was no big deal; it certainly was not an existential threat to democracy and the rule of law. There was no violence toward the Capitol or danger to members of Congress and the vice president.
Forty federal officials were indicted or jailed in the case. These included Nixon’s highest-ranking officials such as the former Attorney General and chairman of his 1972 presidential campaign John Mitchell. Along with the disgraced Mitchell there was John Dean, White House legal counsel, John Ehrlichman and H.R. Halderman (White-House senior staff), Charles Colson, special counsel to the President, and James McCord, Security Director of CREEP. They were found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury in the January cover-up trial of 1975. All of these men carried out orders that, directly or indirectly, originated with Nixon himself.
What stands out as a huge difference between the Watergate crimes responsible for forcing the resignation of Richard Nixon from the presidency of the US and the Jan 6 insurrection was that Nixon became an unindicted co-conspirator while still in office. And he received his comeuppance after only a little over two years since the crimes occurred. At the time, Nixon had been president for the better part of six years.
Trump after eight years of election interference and four years as president has yet to receive his criminal comeuppance. Even if he is convicted later this month on 34 felony counts in Manhattan, his appeals could delay his well-deserved imprisonment from occurring for at least another year or two.
By contrast, three years after Jan.6, and the violent assault on the Capitol building there have been 749 convicted and sentenced offenders. At least 467 rioters have been incarcerated in either jail or prison for an array of offenses including assaulting law enforcement officers, felonious obstructing, impeding, or interfering with a law enforcement officer during a civil disorder.
More than a dozen members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boy were convicted of the serious charges of seditious conspiracy. Additionally, 53 persons have been indicted as fake electors, many of whom have been high ranking Republican officials in the states of Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Arizona.
Compared to racketeering, Trump and company’s very complex and organized election interference that included more than 2000 rioters besieging the Capitol on Jan. 6, and hundreds more working away in seven swing states including Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Arizona.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump sits with his attorneys Emil Bove (L) and Todd Blanche (R) as he attends his trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments at Manhattan Criminal Court on May 3, 2024 in New York City. Trump was charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records last year, which prosecutors say was an effort to hide a potential sex scandal, both before and after the 2016 presidential election. Trump is the first former U.S. president to face trial on criminal charges. (Photo by Mark Peterson – Pool/Getty Images)
Paradoxically, it may seem strange given the reaction of the Republicans and the Department of Justice to Nixon and Watergate, that Trump and his election interference crimes have been given a free pass by the Supreme Court.
With respect to Trump’s inner circles, a few have already pleaded guilty and many more will be held to account regardless of whether Trump is, although this is certainly a reflection on a man who boasted of surrounding himself with the “best and brightest” the nation has to offer.
Gregg Barak is an emeritus professor of criminology and criminal justice at Eastern Michigan University and the author of several books on the crimes of the powerful, including Criminology on Trump (2022) and its 2024 sequel, Indicting the 45th President: Boss Trump, the GOP, and What We Can Do About the Threat to American Democracy.
