His one and only defense is to try to paint everybody else as just as dirty as he is. His reputation, already bad, will sink even further into the muck. But there is one last service his politicized attorney general can do for him before returning to whatever law firm will have him-and that is dirtying those opponents on the way out the door.Īs Trump leaves office, actions he kept secret will become public. Trump never realized his fantasy of locking up his political opponents, and now it seems he never will. Trump could spend every single day of them at Mar-a-Lago, enriching himself at taxpayer expense to the end. There are about 11 weeks between Election Day and Inauguration Day. But the flow from taxpayers is the money most directly under his control-and the easiest for him to accelerate, should his presidency near its end. And the estimate is dwarfed by the sums Trump has collected from Republican candidates and Republican Party funds, as well as from domestic and foreign favor-seekers. The State Department, for example, has declined to make its records of spending at Trump properties available until after the election.
Last call at Mar-a-LagoĪs of mid-September, The Washington Post has identified about $1.1 million of government funds directly paid to Trump enterprises over the course of 274 presidential visits to Trump properties. Can a president direct the IRS to forgive his own debt? That question has never arisen.
The IRS has the power to forgive all or part of a taxpayer’s liability. Making things more complicated is the uncertainty about what a president can pardon for. presidency, and who knows what a John Roberts–led Supreme Court majority reinforced by Amy Coney Barrett will think of the matter? Trump seems likely to try the pardon-and in doing so might plunge the nation into convulsion. But the question has never been tested in court over the long history of the U.S. Trump has asserted a right to pardon himself. Most of them involve state law, but some will be federal, especially credible allegations of tax fraud. A self-pardon crisisĪfter his presidency, Trump will face a large number of legal hazards. It may feel it has little to lose, and something to gain, by working with Trump to force its will while it can. The outgoing Senate majority may therefore feel it has a limited amount of time to impose its priorities on an incoming Biden administration. To make things worse, the new Congress will not be seated until January 3. A pandemic is raging, unemployment has surged in its wake, and President Trump, nursing a wounded ego, may be in a vengeful mood.
Fortunately, the economy was strong enough in 2018–19 to absorb the shock.
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