From TPM Reader AK …
Just read your posts about this. I realize that law is quaint right now, and I haven’t researched the details. Maybe I’m missing something basic, or alternatively maybe it’s just so obvious that nobody is bothering to say it. But if Trump is extorting millions of dollars of value in his *personal* capacity in consideration for taking or desisting from taking official government action, that seems like a textbook definition of bribery or some other form of criminal misconduct, presumably with no official immunity.
Which also presumably means that the other parties to those agreements (law firms, universities, etc) have engaged in criminal conspiracy to commit bribery, with a five year statute of limitations. The likelihood of prosecution may be low, but seems like all of these parties should be made to wonder and worry about it. At a minimum, perhaps they should be characterized as criminal conspirators in how we all talk about the complicity of these actors. (Taking your point on the podcast about duress, and again assuming I’m not missing something basic.)
On the other hand, if these agreements have been entered in any sort of official capacity, then under what legal authority are they being entered? Doesn’t seem to me that the president has any legal authority to cut informal side deals with private parties about how government enforcement power is used untethered from any legal authority—or even any formal legal action (since EOs are not freestanding formal legal action). Even if there were some legal authority, some agency should be doing the settling, not the White House. And of course on the merits any possible legal basis for the underlying government actions that have been threatened are highly, highly dubious in the first place. None of this is how the government ordinarily settles disputes with private parties.
Again, maybe that’s all obvious, but none of it is reflected in how people/journalists mostly seem to be talking about all of this—not just in terms of Trump himself, but in terms of the civil society actors who are complicit. There was some discourse about this when the prestige media outlets settled Trump’s lawsuits back in January, but in a pretty muted and marginal way.
Of course, formal legalities aside, the import of what’s going on in colloquial terms is crystal clear. Seems that all of us should use language and vocabulary that reflects that.
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