As Donald Trump prepares for another presidential run, two legal experts are predicting that his attempt to rise back to power will be stopped in its tracks because he could soon be facing prosecution for at least half a dozen crimes.
In a new column for MSNBC, former White House ethics attorney Richard Painter and Claire Finkelstein, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, argue that Trump shouldn’t even be eligible to run for public office.
Painter, who served under former President George W. Bush, said that Trump’s corruption runs deep and that the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution should bar the former president from holding office again.
“The 14th Amendment, Section 3, disqualifies from public office anyone who took an oath of loyalty to the United States and shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof,” the lawyers argue.
Painter and Finkelstein then cited six federal crimes that Trump should be indicted for.
“[C]rimes for which Trump could be indicted include but are not limited to (1) obstructing justice as identified in the Mueller investigation, (2) bribing and/or extorting Ukraine with military aid to investigate his political opponent Joe Biden and conduct another investigation undermining the Mueller investigation, (3) coercing cabinet members and other federal employees to engage in partisan political activity in violation of the criminal political coercion provisions of the Hatch Act, (4) soliciting election fraud in a phone call to the Georgia Secretary of State in November 2020, (5) criminal sedition in authorizing preparation of the unsigned draft Executive Order dated December 16, 2020 pursuant to which President Trump would have ordered the Secretary of Defense to seize voting machines in certain states to look for evidence of election fraud, and (6) inciting insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. These alleged politically-related crimes are over and above the financial crimes being investigated by the Manhattan DA, who has already indicted the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer,” Painter and Finkelstein wrote.
The lawyers concluded by warning that the US could become a dictatorship if Trump is not held accountable for his crimes.
“A republic doesn’t just become a dictatorship overnight,” Painter said.
“Voters choose for it to be that way. Voters get what they vote for. Americans will go to the polls this November and decide whether to return Trump loyalists in the GOP to Congress,” he concluded. “Then we will go to the polls again in 2024. We know that Trump’s insurrectionists will have a lot of money to spend in both election cycles. If we do not make wise decisions in those elections in spite of this knowledge, 2025 could bring an entirely new chapter in American history, and not one that our founders, or most of us, would hope for,” Painter wrote.
