Foreword: This piece is about US presidents, the crimes they commit, and the apparent impunity they have when committing crimes. As the reader is just about to find out, this essay was written while Trump’s first criminal trial was ongoing. Just before this piece was published he was found guilty of all charges in that first criminal trial. As of this foreword being written Trump has yet to be sentenced, and if that sentence is anything less than being hurled into an active volcano by the Statue of Liberty herself I consider everything you’re about to read to still be completely valid and relevant.
Introduction
One thing the United States likes to claim is that we are a society that values the rule of law. A concept that posits that everyone is equally accountable to the law, regardless of their religion, means, status, or any other factor. It sounds good in theory, a society striving for justice in a chaotic universe by holding all to the same standards and laws. Hopefully I don’t have to tell the reader that the United States has never come close to realizing the dream of equality before the law for all. I know the US is supposed to be a nation striving to create a more perfect union, but we’ve also been a nation of hypocrites for our entire history too. All the bloviating about the US being a nation of freedom rings hollow when one remembers that this is the same nation that began with a system of race based chattel slavery. If the United States can live with a fundamental hypocrisy like slavery for decades, it’s not surprising that the rule of law sounds more like a joke than a goal that’s being strived for.
When this piece is being written Donald Trump was in his first of many criminal trials. The future will reveal how this trial and the others turned out, and what if any effect they had on the 2024 election. Personally, I was furious as I watched this first criminal trial and watched the legal system shuffle with agonizing doltishness towards prosecuting Trump for the endless list of crimes he committed while in office and before he ever ran for president. I asked myself with increasing incredulity how Trump could commit crime after crime and the legal system all but refused to punish him. Any other American with less power and means would face far worse consequences for far less. Even when Trump committed treason by inciting an insurrection it seemed only the people who stormed the Capitol were targeted for punishment, while the people who planned and incited it were largely ignored. Once again, without meaning to Trump highlighted a glaring flaw in the American political system that was ripe for exploitation. The American legal system was either unwilling or unequipped to deal with a man like Trump. Watching the legal system fail to uphold the rule of law was as disappointing as it was shocking.
Impunity is the Rule, not the Exception
However, I should not have been as shocked as I was. As I just said above, the rule of law is a concept the United States has paid lip service to, but never seriously pursued. People of power and means have always been treated with a light hand in the US. I wondered how Trump could violate the law so flagrantly, but the truth is that he is far from the first US president to do so. It seems that the bigger the crime or the more crimes a president commits, the less willing we are to punish them for it. That will be the focus of this piece, US presidents and why they are tacitly, if not explicitly, immune from punishment. I want to highlight one particular crime committed by Richard Nixon and his campaign as he was running for the 1968 elections. Why focus on this one particular story? Well for one, if I tried to list every crime committed by US presidents alone that could quickly balloon into a multi-volume book. Secondly, I think this story encapsulates what the core of the problem is.
I’ll try and explain the events with as much brevity as possible. During the 1968 election campaign, President Johnson’s administration was negotiating with the North and South Vietnamese governments for peace terms, to facilitate an end to the war, or at least the US’ withdrawal. The Nixon campaign had back channel communications with the South Vietnamese government, and they had Henry Kissinger leaking classified information from the Johnson administration (it’s a long story but Kissinger had classified access to the negotiations). Nixon and his campaign didn’t want the Johnson administration to successfully negotiate an end to the war before he left office, that would be seen as a victory for the democrats. Nixon cared more about his own political success than he did about stopping a war. So, the Nixon campaign told the South Vietnamese to sabotage the negotiations, thereby denying the democrats a political victory in time for the November elections. Nixon assured the South Vietnamese government that they could get a better peace deal if he was president (North Vietnam conquered and unified all of Vietnam in 1975 if you’re wondering how much that promise was worth). Nixon got what he wanted, the South Vietnamese torpedoed the negotiations, and US involvement in the war lasted another 5 years. Just in case this isn’t obvious, Nixon committed treason. He was a private citizen clandestinely interfering in US foreign affairs. Everyone remembers Nixon for the Watergate scandal, but on the scale of the human suffering Nixon’s treason caused the Watergate scandal can’t even begin to compare. The reader might at this point be wondering why they haven’t heard about this, and why this story isn’t a massive piece of popular history in the United States.
To answer that, I’m going to quote the fantastic book Kissinger’s Shadow, by Greg Grandin. This quote begins by referring to new information about the negotiations the Nixon campaign received.
“Nixon’s people acted fast…they urged the South Vietnamese to derail the talks, promising better conditions were Nixon to be elected. President Johnson was informed of the meddling. Through wiretaps and intercepts, he learned that Nixon’s campaign was telling the South Vietnamese that Nixon was going to win and “to hold on a while longer.” If the White House had gone public with the information, the outrage might have also swung the elections to Humphrey. But Johnson hesitated. He feared that “Nixon’s conniving” was just too explosive. “This is treason,” he said. “It would rock the world.”
“Johnson stayed silent, Nixon won, and the war went on.”
I’m not certain if the wiretaps and intercepts Johnson used to obtain this information were legal (knowing the FBI under J Edgar Hoover I’m inclined to think not), but even if they were legal they were certainly unethical. Perhaps that is another important reason why Johnson wanted to keep Nixon’s crimes a secret, revealing them would have revealed his own crimes (these wiretaps were far from the only ones Johnson authorized during his presidency.) Even with this caveat in place, I find Johnson’s rationale positively insane.
As I just pointed out, Johnson was by no means innocent himself, but he knew that Nixon committed treason, and yet he thought it was a better idea to let a man who had committed treason become president than to point out his treason? WHY????
Did Johnson fear revealing what Nixon had done would appear to be a political smear campaign, a chance to attack someone in the opposite party before an election? Was he afraid that a reckoning with presidential power and secret keeping would dig up skeletons in his closet, and maybe limit the power of future presidents? Is the ruling class willfully blind to the damage this lack of accountability causes? How could Johnson possibly think that a man willing to commit treason to obtain political office wouldn’t abuse that office once he got it? Do politicians at this level of power adopt a code of silence? “I’ll let you get away with your crimes if you let me get away with mine.” That’s the only logical reason I can think of, because Johnson’s excuse that Nixon’s meddling in the negotiations would “rock the world,” if it came to light is trash. You know what else will rock the world, keeping a superpower locked in a war in Southeast Asia for another five years to advance one man’s political career.
This excuse that is often trotted out; that holding presidents accountable for their crimes, or even revealing them in the first place would be too destabilizing, it might even threaten the entire American political system. I can’t fathom how anyone can say this with a straight face. Isn’t not punishing American presidents for the crimes they commit equally a threat to the entire American political system? What precedent are you setting, and what behavior are you allowing when you REFUSE to punish wrongdoing? You’re not saving the system, you’re just destroying it by other means. If the reader is wondering why Donald Trump could plan and incite an insurrection on January 6th and get away with it, it’s because the US does not hold presidents accountable. Johnson didn’t tell the nation that Nixon committed treason, Ford pardoned Nixon for Watergate, Reagan didn’t get thrown in prison for the Iran-Contra scheme, George W. Bush’s administration lied to the American public about Iraq possessing WMDs to justify invading. There’s so much else I’m probably not even aware of, but all of it goes to show that the more we let presidents get away with, the more bold they will become. What else might a US president do when they realize they won’t be punished for it? What’s a bigger threat to American democracy, obeying the rule of law and punishing high office holders, or naively hoping that a president has enough shame not to do anything wrong?
I’ve said before that politics is an ugly business, and geopolitics is ruthless enough that even principled leaders might feel forced to make terrible decisions if they feel like it could prevent an even worse outcome, but this isn’t the issue being discussed. I thought the point of elected representatives was that they were supposed to be accountable to the people that elected them. Can the United States even call itself a republic if the highest office holder is immune to the law? At what point can we dispense with the pretense and just start calling the US president an absolute monarch?
At the very least, can we stop pretending America is a society that cares about the rule of law? We clearly don’t, and we clearly haven’t cared, otherwise we’d have put a stop to this impunity long ago. Alternatively, if we won’t do anything about presidential impunity can we at least have the dignity to be ashamed of it?
Postscript: If you want to read more about politicians and others in power escaping any punishment for the horrible things they’ve done, I highly recommend Kissinger’s Shadow. Grandin manages to pack a huge amount of information into a short and highly readable book, and through Kissinger’s career the reader will also get a look into the events that shatter the illusion that the US were the “good guys” in the Cold War.
https:/bookshop.org/p/books/kissinger-s-shadow-the-long-reach-of-america-s-most-controversial-statesman-greg-grandin/8479378?ean=9781250097170