Fifty years ago, President Richard Nixon, facing three articles of impeachment over the Watergate break-in and wiretapping scandal, resigned from office. Pardoned just a month later, Nixon would spend the rest of his years in quiet retirement, always tainted by Watergate.
Thirty years ago, a special counsel was appointed to review President Bill Clinton’s involvement in the failed Whitewater real estate project; scandals for Clinton snowballed from there, as Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky came into the public eye for their alleged affairs with the President. Clinton remained defiant and successfully withstood a Senate impeachment trial. He went on to set up a multi-billion-dollar charitable foundation, and former First Lady Hillary Clinton went on to become a U.S. Senator, Secretary of State, and the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee.
In the current era, Donald Trump, a Democrat until 2009, burst onto the political scene in 2015 as a dark horse and quickly eliminated his Republican primary competitors, clinching the 2016 GOP nomination despite bombastic rhetoric where he mocked the handicapped, weathered the emergence of previous wildly inappropriate remarks about women, and made many other provocative statements that either delighted or horrified voters. He won the election handily with 304 electoral votes but lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes.
On May 30, 2024, former President Trump was convicted by a Manhattan jury of 34 charges to illegally influence the 2016 election by paying $130,000 in hush money to silence a porn actress who said they had sex.
There is nothing in the Constitution preventing a convicted felon from running for President. The legacies of Nixon and Clinton and hyperpolarization of politics have made voters increasingly numb to Presidents behaving badly.
As with all things Trump, the Manhattan verdict is generating a lot of emotion on both sides. No one is denying the hush money payment was made, particularly as former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was charged in 2018 for making the payment for the campaign, reached a plea deal, and served time.
At this point, days after the verdict, several things seem obvious. First, Trump will not see prison time for some time, if at all. While it is technically on the table, Trump has no prior offenses, and the judge already opted to merely fine Trump for his inappropriate behavior during the trial, where regular citizens acting similarly would have been jailed. And of course, this verdict will be tied up for years in appeals. It’s even possible the appeals process could outlive the defendant.
Second, the verdict will have a minimal impact on the election. As I wrote last week, the Americans who will decide the 2024 election – those voting in swing states – appear to be voting with their wallets, not over policy or ethics.
The verdict has become the GOP’s newest litmus test, and that is a shame. Former Maryland governor Larry Hogan, now running for the Senate, posted on X about “respect for the rule of law.” A Trump campaign staffer responded, “You just ended your campaign.”
With nothing else to offer voters but Trump – no real platform or issues – the Republican Party is hamstringing itself yet again when it comes to gaining more GOP registrants or new Congressional seats. The Republican House had the opportunity to orchestrate a win with the GOP Senate on border security earlier this year; instead they opted to leave it to Trump.
In the meantime, the White House is expected to issue this week an executive order effectively sealing the border to asylum seekers when daily border traffic reaches 2,500 (basically meaning immediately). The Trump gamble for key legislation isn’t a winner for GOP legislators (it may not be a winner for President Biden who still has abysmal approval ratings over the economy and immigration).
Finally, the New York verdict all but guarantees across-the-board legal retaliation from Republicans. The GOP coined the term “lawfare” and it will be willing to wage it in return, beginning with Donald Trump in a second term in the White House.
I am not a lawyer, and I am not going to spend column space parsing whether the Manhattan district attorney was correct in determining that pursuing the felony prosecution was appropriate. I will instead note that Alvin Bragg campaigned for his job on the assertion that he was the right attorney to prosecute Donald Trump.
The Stormy Daniels case, while seedy and beneath the dignity of the Presidency, pales in significance to the Federal case in Florida alleging that Trump used classified government documents as personal trophies, the Georgia case charging Trump and 14 co-defendants with trying to overturn the 2020 election (4 co-defendants have pled guilty), and the second Federal case also charging Trump with trying to overturn the 2020 election (augmented by evidence turned over to the Department of Justice from the Congressional January 6 hearings). These cases directly challenge Trump’s fitness for office.
Like many Americans, I wish to see Donald Trump held accountable for his actions. It’s just not clear to me that the hush money verdict comes anywhere close to addressing the breathtaking liberties Trump has taken with the American system of government.
Merritt Hamilton Allen is a PR executive and former Navy officer. She appeared regularly as a panelist on NM PBS and is a frequent guest on News Radio KKOB. A Republican, she lives amicably with her Democratic husband north of I-40 where they run one head of dog, and two of cat. She can be reached at news.ind.merritt@gmail.com.