It's a fair cop

A recent post on the Intercept’s website considers the options and probability of Trump facing prosecution once he leaves office. Whilst he is president, he has immunity from prosecution over federal offences, but given the nature of his business dealings there seems to be plenty to go at at a state level. I wonder if elected, whether Joe Biden would pardon him, as Gerald Ford did with Richard Nixon. It has been suggested that Trump could even pre-pardon himself, although such a move has never been tried before. The Intercept’s view is that the elite is at the end of the day more likely to look after its own. It would be a bad precedent for them for one of their own to go to jail.

One hopes that Benjamin Netanyahu will not face such lenience if he is found guilty on his corruption charges. One of his predecessors of course did go to jail—Ehud Olmert—on corruption charges. Another populist leader talking of going to jail is Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, who is in the news for saying he would happily ‘serve his country in prison’ if found guilty of ordering or at least being in some way culpable in the deaths of thousands of alleged drug dealers (none of whom had the opportunity of proving their innocence of course). Populist leaders love to proclaim their law and order credentials, but as we’ve seen in the UK with the Cummings saga, what constitutes the law is flexible. Especially so when you get to appoint the judges, as clearly Johnson and his cronies would love to do here, or indeed as the Law and Justice Party has already done in Poland (not to mention Trump’s hundreds of judicial nominees). 

​It would be good if Trump, Netanyahu and Duterte could share a cell together somewhere. Their company would be made immeasurably more jovial if joker Johnson were to join them, but as things stand the only current investigation into his misdemeanours appears to be the London Assembly’s inquiries into his potentially corrupt relationship with American businesswoman Jennifer Arcuri, who has now admitted that they had an affair. So far then, full marks to Israel for setting a precedent. Let’s hope they follow it up this time round, and provide an example other leaders may wish to dwell upon.