TORONTO – The USA, or at least some of its citizens, just incriminated one of its former presidents and current candidate for the upcoming presidency. No doubt, you have heard that Donald Trump has been found guilty on thirty-four charges of “doctoring his financial returns”. President Trump, meet Al Capone.
It was not about a social/moral issue. Republican Trump has been found guilty of inappropriately, from a fiscal/financial/tax perspective, of paying a courtesan to keep her silent about services she provided him. A jury of twelve of his peers found Trump in contravention of the Law.
“They” could have asked me to serve on the jury and saved themselves money and trouble. I am neither Democrat nor Republican, therefore, perhaps “objective”. Nonetheless, I confess that, as a [former] Canadian elected official, I had more than my fair share of reasons for reserving judgement on their protestations of “[legal] righteousness”.
Yet, cautiously, I would have salivated at the opportunity to examine the confidential documents that he allegedly took with him upon leaving office – a purely professional interest.
There could not have been much in them that Homeland Security, the FBI, NASA or the CIA had not already redacted. Still, it would be wonderful to know what he and senior advisors “knew when they knew” how external agencies and governments were threatening the nation’s economic and political security. For that matter, similar documents generated under Democratic presidents would have been at least as captivating.
While it is reassuring to ‘learn’ that no-one is above the law, call me skeptical, but I do not find reassurance in the knowledge that a multi-billionaire is found guilty of “cheating the IRS” of a reported USD100,000+; not when street crime accounts for tens of thousands deaths attributable to weapons or illicit drugs in American cities, as the political power struggle motivates Court actions costing in the mega millions.
Leaders in high places have a DNA causes them to “wrap themselves in the flag” whenever they embark on diatribe or when they plead for “understanding” of conditions that made them do it” when they ‘offend’ the standards the rest of the citizenry is expected to follow. Now we have confirmation, if it was needed, that the USA (and by extension, Canada) is not immune from the political disease that afflicts quasi-dictatorial governance in many governments around the world.
If anything, the Trump “conviction” should trigger the medical caution levelled at all practitioners: physician heal thyself.