The final weeks in the White House: Donald Trump’s dangerous ending

Donald Trump still has all the power of a US president. His predecessors used them in their final days for mass graces.

Keystone

Last night there was finally good news for Donald Trump: Alaska announced its election results. Trump won against Joe Biden and secured three electoral votes. This is a balm for Trump’s soul, yet victory in the far north no longer serves him. Trump lost the election. Even the judicial procedure with which we are proceeding against the alleged electoral fraud does not change anything.

70 days before he has to leave his seat in the White House, Trump still prefers to wrap himself in his cocoon of conspiracy theories and false claims of victory rather than face reality. Joe Biden, the legitimate winner of the US election, finds this behavior “embarrassing”. Until Trump admits his defeat, Biden will still have to forgo the important daily secret service briefings, which he would actually be allowed to do.

Biden, the chosen besiegers, who has no access from the gruff lord of the castle to the White House: the most powerful democracy in the world is currently stuck in this crazy spot. But don’t be fooled by the deceptive calm surrounding the current president of the United States, which is barely visible except on Twitter. Chris Cillizza, who is keeping an eye on the Washington tragedy for “CNN,” even warns that the “wildest days of American politics” are now dawning.

When Bill Clinton got his stepbrother out of jail

It could get wild for two main reasons. First, with the firing of his Defense Minister Mark Esper on Monday, Trump indicated that he would use his three “You’re Fired!” As a reality TV star in his old presidential days. (“You’re fired!”) He wants to use more.

Christopher Wray, the FBI Federal Police Chief, or Gina Haspel, the first female chief of CIA intelligence, could be shot later. In Trump’s taste, both do too little to act against the supposedly corrupt Democrats.

Second, Trump will pull out the presidential red pencil during the end of his term and exercise his right to forgive all kinds of people. The constitution provides that the president of the United States can get prisoners out of jail with the stroke of a pen or reduce the sentence (in Switzerland this right belongs to parliament, which has only used it twice since 1997).

And US presidents like to show mercy towards the end of their term. Barack Obama, for example, pardoned 1,927 people, 330 of them on his last day in the White House. Gerald Ford forgave thousands of conscientious objectors who evaded Vietnam. And Bill Clinton got his half-brother Roger out of prison, convicted of cocaine trafficking.

Steve Bannon’s bloodthirsty plea

Usually, presidents of the United States don’t sign pardon requests until they have been found admissible by the Justice Department. But Trump doesn’t believe in this bureaucratic deviation. For example, he forgave his close friend Roger Stone in a very un-bureaucratic way.

Stone had previously refused to testify in connection with Russian interference in the US election. The fact that Trump then bailed him earned him corruption charges from the Republican Party as well.

This should be just a taste of what Trump will do over the next ten weeks. Former allies accused like his chief strategist Steve Bannon are secretly hoping for mercy. Bannon, who faces up to 40 years in prison for embezzlement, does so by venting a fury against Trump epidemiologist and critic Anthony Fauci. He recently asked Trump to behead Fauci and put his head in front of the White House.

It is also possible that Trump will also forgive Ghislaine Maxwell, the former partner of pedosexual serial offender Jeffrey Epstein. Maxwell faces a lengthy prison sentence for alleged involvement in the crimes. Trump has already wished Maxwell “the best” after his arrest.

The big question remains whether Trump will allow himself the presidential coup de grace to crown his term. According to the constitution, nothing prevents a US president from being previously pardoned from any form of prosecution. It has never happened before. The Supreme Court should decide on the legitimacy of such self-forgiveness. Trump himself has already announced on Twitter that he has “absolutely the right” to “PAVE myself”.

Trump’s presidency and immunity from prosecution ends on January 20. And Justitia is ready. He is threatened with silent money payment proceedings in alleged business and obstruction of justice. In addition, 26 women accuse him of sexual harassment. He would need it, his grace.