Should Biden prosecute Trump? Examine him? A debate.

The 2020 Democratic National Convention has presented speaker after speaker describing the crimes of President Donald Trump. Ordinary people and politicians, including former President Barack Obama, have fueled Trump’s self-sacrifice, the policy of his family separation, the deployment of military troops on peaceful Protestants, and his attacks on the integrity of both the 2016 and 2020 elections and violations of the law and the Constitution. (It may not have been so long ago, one might think, that Trump was impeached for his role in the Russian electoral scandal and his obstruction of special lawyer Robert Mueller investigated on it.)

But Democrats have yet to say this week that President Joe Biden should investigate Trump as he will pursue if the former vice president wins the November election. The New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, however, made that argument recently. I interviewed Goldberg – a former Leiste colleague – on my podcast The Yeast on Wednesday to discuss the convention, the column, and the merits and dangers of such an investigation or prosecution. Part of our conversation is transcribed below; it is edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Mike Pesca: In contemplation when you explain this column, how much have you marched the case against Donald Trump, and argument that you hold him legally responsible, because that’s what the law requires? And to what extent have you calculated, is this the right time to say it? Is this the message we need to give? I have a great platform, is this where I want the conversation to go? Because a lot of the criticism is essentially, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, but don ‘t say it now.”

Michelle Goldberg: I actually think people should say it now, because I think you should at least get some kind of commitment in that area, right? I mean, I do not think it should be a centerpiece of the convention. I do not think it should be a song at Joe Biden events, if there were public Joe Biden events. But I think there’s a reason that progressives are putting these plans out right now. There is a reason why the Center for American Progress, which is very close to the Democratic Party, has explained this. There’s a reason Protect Democracy is starting to do all this work.

In part, it’s because when and when a Joe Biden administration begins, they will be plunged into so much coherent crisis that there will be many arguments, some convincing, not to do so. Just like there were arguments for not doing this with George W. Bush, when Barack Obama came into office. And those arguments made sense at the time. Hy [was] dealing with an economic crisis; this is all hands on deck. The bandwidth of the administration is limited. He wants to bring the country forward. He ran on this kind of post-partisans, and brought the country together [message].

It’s easy for me to see why she felt like those arguments were convincing at the time. But you look at the result: It created even more of a culture of impunity in the Republican Party. And so it created a culture, I think, where the people who are now implementing illegal schemes for Trump’s name probably feel a little compassionate about what this might mean for their future careers. That I think it’s just very, very important – both for justice, and also for some attempt to create a public basic understanding of what we have been and what we are going through – but also as an example for the next prototo-authoritarian president .

And this is not just something that the Biden administration would be a spearhead, and in one sense or another it may not be something that the Biden administration leads. It could be easy, I think – maybe [it] should take the form of a committee from outside. It could be a special committee in Congress. I know there are people in the House who are starting to think about what this might look like. And then there’s a bunch of investigations going on at state level that should just be allowed to continue. But I think there must be some sort of basic understanding in the party that there can certainly be no pardons, and that the next Advocate General might need … We have just learned, for example, that the First Chamber, that this Republican-led House of Representatives committee made criminal referrals to many people close to Donald Trump, and the Department of Justice apparently never took them up. I think there should be an expectation that the next Department of Justice, not that it will prosecute, but that it will investigate.

Yes. I think for our democracy it is in the abstract bad for any presidential election a bit of a referendum on the accusation of the previous president. If we have successive presidencies and they are busy with the project to lock up the last one, we will never function.

I think that’s fine, but at the moment we’re just sticking to these standards. That the Republican administrations come in and prosecute their predecessors on ridiculous bullshit accusations, and then Democrats come in and say, “Well, we have to enforce these standards, so we are not really going to prosecute or investigate real systemic crimes.” And there is no reason to believe that will be repaid in the next Republican administration.

I actually think that’s true. [But] I do not think that is the most compelling argument. I think in particular there are exceptions to the rules of not pursuing the predecessor, and I think Donald Trump may very well be the exception. We talk about norms, but norms are there when there are no laws, and if there are laws and they are violated, we can not shirk our responsibility.

But you said that the important thing to do now is to get commitments. I understand that; that’s a good strategy. On the other hand, by emphasizing, it could impede the whole project of elections. Let’s say that Joe Biden was asked this point blankly, “Would you prosecute Donald Trump, if elected?” What is his ideal answer?

Well, he is asked that the point is empty. And he kind of said, “I think it would be very, very bad for democracy, but I would not stand in the way if the Justice Department decided to pursue something.” I wish he was a little less negative about the whole thing, but I think I do not want him to say, “I will direct the Department of Justice to do this.” For me, the important thing is that he says, “I will not stop the Department of Justice from doing this.”

I think everything can be true, but I’m a little worried about getting out, because the Republicans need something to run through, and I do not think stronger showerheads will make it. If the whole thing becomes a referendum, will elections be persecution of the last man?, maybe that will give some wind in the Republican sails.

Yes, but Mike, I do not have the power to turn the election into a referendum on my ideas. You know, I do not think there is any reason to think that this will rise in the public debate so far as these elections will become a referendum, “shall we make the Bureau of Financial Protection anew?” Right? These are questions that I do not think will capture the attention of ordinary voters who evaluate the economy and the answer to COVID, but they will be very important, in terms of staffing a new administration. Again, I do not think I put this off – I wish I had the power to set the agenda, but of course I do not.

I know you do not have the sole power to set the agenda, but if this becomes a major talking point, it may be bad for the Democrats, but that’s a side issue. My main point is, I think you and I have a little difference in that I’m very, very, very worried about the president. Maybe even as concerned as what Trump also did that deserves prosecution. Part of my concern is that when people say we should have persecuted George W. Bush, I do not really agree. Every president is likely to break the laws.

No no no, I do not think we should have persecuted George W. Bush. I think there must have been something that Patrick Leahy and Sheldon Whitehouse proposed, a kind of truth commission, just to get the truth about torture, about the origins of the war in Iraq. I think there should have been a public outcry, which is something very different from a prosecution. I do not think there was any real reason to prosecute George W. Bush.

But a lot of people do that, and once those spirits are free … I interviewed Elizabeth Holtzman. You probably did, too, and she got a lot of attention because she introduced articles of anchorage against Richard Nixon and argued that against Trump. And yet, if you look at her record, she introduced as a favorite articles of imposition by every Republican president of Nixon to this day.

Even Gerald Ford?

I’ll have to look back. Any elected Republican president I should say. [Ed. note: There was no formal impeachment investigation into Ford during his presidency.]

Well, I would say that is different from the argument I make. Part of the problem is that there have been many crimes committed by many Republican presidents. But I also think Trump has been qualitatively and quantitatively different. And there has to be a way to underline that, to take this episode – if we’m lucky we can – and sort of cauterize it. To look at. As much as I think Trump is in many ways a product of trends that have been in the Republican Party and the Conservative movement, I also think that there should be a way to mark as we can – you know , Inshallah – to be these four years as an abomination and to make Trumpism an epithet in the foreseeable future.

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