On Jailing Presidents
Post-WWII arrests, convictions and (sometimes) incarceration of heads of state were pretty routine in Communist bloc/CIS nations, unstable developing countries (mostly in Africa, South America and Asia) but also those which have also embraced Western-style governance like Israel (Moshe Katsav, Ehud Olmert) and even NATO allies like France (François Charles Amand Fillon, Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy). Israel’s PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, is currently in an extended trial for fraud and corruption and, if convicted, faces jail time as well. Whether by pardon or failed votes to convict impeached presidents in the US, no former US president has faced criminal conviction. Given the complexion of the Trump-appointment-dominated 6-3 Supreme Court, we cannot expect a parallel risk for Donald Trump here.
In July of 2024, the US Supreme Court gave Donald Trump (and any subsequent president) a get-out-of-jail free card in Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593, a landmark decision in which the Court determined that presidential immunity from criminal prosecution presumptively extends to all of a president's "official acts" – with absolute immunity for official acts within an exclusive presidential authority. Courts have subsequently given Trump broad leeway in what comprises an “official act,” and the Court’s reasoning seems to have stretched well beyond any legitimate constitutional basis. With that “trump” card in pocket, Donald Trump has pushed the envelope going after his political opponents with open vengeance and ordering federal troops to invade cities with Democratic mayors or governors often with brutal repression.
Today, however, I would like to discuss the recent beginning of a five-year prison sentence for former French President (2007-12) Nicolas Sarkozy, the first French ex-president to go to jail for conspiring to fund his election campaign with money from late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. BBC journalists, Paul Kirby and Hugh Schofieldin, provide these details (on October 21st): “More than 100 people applauded and shouted ‘Nicolas!’ as he left his villa in the exclusive 16th district of Paris, holding his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy by the hand… His son Louis, 28, had appealed to supporters for a show of support, while another son, Pierre, called for a message of love – ‘nothing else, please’.
“Nicolas Sarkozy, 70, was driven through the entrance of the notoriously overcrowded 19th-Century prison in the Montparnasse district south of the River Seine at 09:40 local time (07:40 GMT), while dozens of police officers cordoned off most of the surrounding streets… He continues to protest his innocence in the highly controversial Libyan money affair and posted a message on X as he was driven to the jail, saying: ‘I have no doubt. Truth will prevail. But how crushing the price will have been.’… ‘With unwavering strength I tell [the French people] it is not a former president they are locking up this morning - it is an innocent man,’ he wrote. ‘Do not feel sorry for me because my wife and my children are by my side... but this morning I feel deep sorrow for a France humiliated by a will for revenge.’
“Moments after Sarkozy entered jail, his lawyer Christophe Ingrain said a request for his release had been filed. Nothing justified his imprisonment, said Mr Ingrain, adding: ‘He'll be inside for at least three weeks or a month.’… Sarkozy has said he wants no special treatment at La Santé prison, although he has been put in its isolation section for his own safety as other inmates are infamous drugs dealers or have been convicted for terror offences…
“Sarkozy's cell in the prison's isolation wing is believed to be on the top floor and will measure between 9-11 sq m (95-120 sq ft). There had earlier been talk of him serving his term in the another wing for ‘vulnerable people’, where other VIPs have been jailed in the past.
“He will have a toilet, a shower, a desk, a small electric hob and a small TV, for which he will have to pay a monthly €14 (£12 [/$16]) fee, and the right to a small fridge… The former president has the right to receive information from the outside world and family visits as well as written and phone contact.
“But he is in effect in solitary confinement, allowed just one hour a day for exercise, by himself in the wing's segregated courtyard… ‘Conditions of detention in an isolation wing are pretty hard," La Santé ex-deputy head Flavie Rault told BFMTV. ‘You are alone, all the time. The only contact you have is with prison staff. You never come across another detainee for security reasons and there's a type of social isolation which makes life difficult’.”
Could this happen here? Trump’s mass pardon of the 1/2/21 convicted felons who invaded and desecrated the US Capitol, with resulting death and serious injury, whom he labeled as “patriots,” tells you all you need to know. Having brazenly committed what appeared to be unlawful retention of highly classified documents, the same charges his DOJ is alleging against his former senior advisor, John “now my enemy” Bolton, Trump seems to revel in his newfound status (at least to him) of “absolute, unquestioning” power… clearly above the law.
His 2024 election shut down all federal prosecutions against him, as the DOJ seems to be going after those federal employees, just doing their assigned jobs, who assisted in those investigations. But those efforts cannot erase his 34-count fraud conviction in NY state court or his massive civil judgment for the same unlawful acts. Instead, Trump is directing his DOJ to pursue criminal prosecutions against those state officials (in NY and Georgia) who investigated and/or successfully litigated the above results.
I’m Peter Dekom, and what was a difficult but publicly necessary prosecution of state leaders in France and Israel is a level of accountability that the MAGA Republican Party would never condone here, even as a once objective GOP drove a corrupt Richard Nixon from office, requiring a presidential pardon to prevent Nixon’s probable conviction and incarceration.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment