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It seems less and less likely that the Senate will convict former President Donald Trump
The gulf between those who want to “Stop the Steal” and those who want to “Build Back Better” is vast and seemingly unbridgeable. Millions of Americans still believe Trump won the election fair and square, only to have it stolen from him. They believe this in part because many conservative elected officials, activists, and media outlets continue to treat the claim as legitimate, or at least open to doubt.
To make matters worse, if that’s possible, the Republican Party has recently moved in a decidedly authoritarian direction. According to the Varieties of Democracy Institute in Sweden, the U.S. Republican Party in 2018 was more likely to reject political pluralism, demonize its opponents, disrespect the rights of minorities, and encourage political violence than 85 percent of the governing parties in the world’s democracies.
Getty / The Atlantic
On December 29, 1992, a grand jury delivered a 13-count felony indictment of Alabama Governor Guy Hunt. Four months later, the governor was convicted of money laundering of looting his inaugural fund to cover a variety of personal expenses, including a marble shower and removed from office.
At the time of Hunt’s conviction, former West Virginia Governor Arch Moore Jr. was rounding out a prison sentence for a litany of felonies, including tax fraud and obstruction of justice. Mail fraud and racketeering landed Maryland’s legendary progressive governor, Marvin Mandel, in prison, and election fraud did the same for Connecticut’s Governor John Rowland. Rhode Island Governor Edward DiPrete and Illinois Governor George Ryan served time for bribery, Tennessee’s Ray Blanton for extortion, and Louisiana’s Edwin Edwards for nearly all the above. And of course, Illinois’s Rod Blagojevich secured a 14-year prison sentence for his attempt to sell a U.S. Senate s
The call for the removal of President Donald Trump from power, or another impeachment, is getting louder from Democratic lawmakers. But what if he tries to invoke a self-pardon? Experts weigh in. I certainly imagine his advisors would be telling him, if you want to protect yourself from criminal liability the safest way to do that is do what Richard Nixon did. Which is to resign and then have your vice president, who becomes president, pardon you and that would make the pardon valid and there would be no question about it, says law professor Julie Nice of University of San Francisco.