Guilty as sin 34 times over, but put him in jail?
A proposal for Gov. Kathy Hochul
For the first time in U.S. history, a former president has been convicted of serious crimes — in this case 34 felonies for falsifying business records to cover up hush money paid to his paramour porn-star during a political campaign.
It is a situation made even more complex and utterly unique by the fact that Donald Trump has a cult-like following and is the presumptive nominee of his party to regain the office he claims was stolen from him to begin with. If you were a screenwriter dreaming up an idea for a movie about a fragile and dysfunctional Third World democracy, you couldn’t do much better than the current reality in the United States of America.
Many observers, especially Republicans and Trump supporters, thought the case brought by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg was weak. From what I’ve seen, however, the evidence presented was quite strong and pointed beyond a reasonable doubt to Trump’s guilt.
The problem lies in the novel method Bragg used to elevate what are a normally misdemeanors to felonies. The latter class of crime typically carries a prison sentence of some sort; the former does not. I think it’s a safe bet that’s why Bragg structured his case the way he did. Bragg is an elected official — and therefore a political animal — so it’s hard not to see a political motive in what he did.
But convictions are convictions. Unlike virtually all Trump supporters I’ve heard from, I respect the jury’s work. The idea that the jurors would convict Trump unanimously because they’re liberal New Yorkers out to get his right-wing ass is very unlikely, given the possibility of threats to the jurors’ own safety from the likes of the violent hooligans who stormed the Capitol on behalf of Trump on January 6, 2021. More likely, these jurors are people of uncommon valor.
Here’s my problem with the whole episode. No matter how honest the jury and the officers of the court might have been in trying and ultimately convicting Trump, both the exercise and the outcome will always be viewed by roughly half the country as an effort to assassinate Trump politically — to take him out of the equation and deprive voters of the opportunity to vote for him one last time. That would not be healthy for the nation.
So here’s my suggestion and it doesn’t involve President Biden issuing a pardon. He can’t do that anyway because Trump’s convictions were handed down by a jury in a New York state court, not in a federal court.
If I had a megaphone that was loud enough, I would call on New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to get involved — but not to pardon Trump and thereby hold him harmless for the crimes for which he was convicted.
Trump is slated to be sentenced on July 11, only four days before the Republican National Convention that will nominate him gets underway in Milwaukee. If, as is likely, Trump is sentenced to a prison term, Hochul should simply commute Trump’s sentence after he’s spent a couple of nights in jail — in effect, reducing his sentence to time served. She has the power to do so under New York law. That way, Trump will remain a convicted felon and will have gotten a taste of what it’s like to be in the slammer, but he will be free to campaign and continue his active run for the White House.
Of course, this won’t please everyone. Trump’s people won’t be satisfied until he’s completely exonerated. On the other end, Hochul will face a furious backlash from partisan Democrats and others on the left who think she caved in to the right wing — blah, blah, blah. There will be the inevitable (but invidious) comparisons to President Gerald Ford’s preemptive pardon of Richard Nixon in 1974 for all possible crimes related to the Watergate scandal.
But in this case, Hochul would not be issuing pardons for any crimes. Rather, she would be dramatically reducing Trump’s prison sentence down to a symbolic duration. I hope many would agree with me that it would be a statesmanlike action on Hochul’s part. Or maybe you will hate my proposal so much that you will attack your screens with a knife …
Your thoughts?
As usual, Mr. Cowgill, a lucid analysis of the situation before us. However, I did want to take a moment or two to point out a couple of things.
First, you made reference to Ford’s pardon of Nixon. As I remember it, three of the leaders of the Republican Party in Congress, Rep. John Rhodes of Arizona; Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania ; and Mr. Conservative, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona; went up to the White House and told President Nixon that he had no support and should resign. Contrast that with what we have seen since yesterday at 5:00 pm. Republicans trashing the judge, the jury, the entire legal system. Senator Marco Rubio saying “this is what we see in a Communist country”. Senator Tim Scott talking about a weaponized legal system. All of which makes me wonder how “Sleepy Joe Biden “can be “incompetent,” “can’t put two sentences together”, and yet simultaneously can be criminal mastermind behind a nationwide conspiracy to undermine the Orange Messiah. But that may be for another day.
On a more practical level, I think that Trump’s legal eagles will work to get the actual sentencing postponed (until after the GOP National Convention?) and I fear that the Democrats of New York will put pressure on Judge Merchan to grant the postponement in order to demonstrate to the public that they are not “political.”
I like your idea -- reducing Trump's stay in jail to the symbolic equivalent of Henry David Thoreau's one-night stay in the slammer. Of course, Thoreau did it voluntarily: He refused to pay a poll tax as a protest against a government that supported slavery and the Mexican War. Trump, on the other hand, wouldn't know an act of civil disobedience if it hit him in the face. (Of course, he's always willing to ignore his tax bill, but that's another story.) As for the likelihood that Gov. Hochul will reduce his sentence? Not very. It would cost her too much politically.