‘First Felon’ Trump takes US into a grubby global club
Donald Trump’s son was dead wrong to suggest his father’s criminal conviction was a sign America is becoming “Third World”. In fact, it indicates that the US is becoming less exceptional and more like the wider world.
Several countries have tried and convicted former leaders for crimes committed while in office and some make rather a habit of it.
Peru, for example, has had three former presidents in the dock and in the can – Alberto Fujimori, Pedro Castillo and Alejandro Toledo.
The Philippines tried its former president Joseph Estrada, who served just 31 months before his ouster in a “constitutional coup”. Found guilty of “plunder”, Mr Estrada was detained (albeit in a holiday home that was hardly a prison) for the best part of a decade. His successor Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo pardoned him. She too would face a couple years of legal problems after nearly a decade as president. Charged with electoral fraud, Ms Arroyo was arrested. Eventually, the charges against her were dropped for lack of evidence.
South Korea too has tried and convicted a fair few former presidents. American Enterprise Institute analyst Olivia Schieber noted in 2018: “Half of all living former South Korean presidents are now in prison. On October 5, 2018, former president Lee Myung-bak was sentenced to 15 years for embezzling 24.6 billion won (roughly $22 million). Lee will join his successor, disgraced ex-president Park Geun-hye, who last year began her 25-year sentence for various charges of corruption”. She added that South Korea had a decided enthusiasm for the “lock him up” school of politics.
Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, popularly known as ‘Lula’, was convicted in 2017 of money laundering and corruption in a huge bribery scandal dubbed Operation Car Wash. He spent 580 days in prison but then a Supreme Court judge annulled the convictions, making it possible for Lula to run for the presidency again. He won.
Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has faced several police investigations since he left office in 2022, not least into his role in a conspiracy to sell expensive undeclared gifts from overseas dignitaries and whether his administration illegally surveilled politicians, judges and journalists. In March this year, Mr Bolsonaro was formally accused by police of fraud relating to his Covid vaccination records, which may mean criminal charges.
In the United States thus far, there has been little appetite for putting former presidents in prison. When Richard Nixon seemed headed that way over Watergate, he resigned in August 1974, with his successor Gerald Ford issuing an unconditional pardon the very next month.
But in the past few decades, America has shown a rising enthusiasm for using impeachment as a tool to punish presidents. Bill Clinton was impeached by the Republicans. Donald Trump was impeached twice during his single term in office but in each case, he was acquitted on all counts by the Senate.
But I would argue that Mr Trump’s criminal trial and conviction – as well as all the trials to come – don’t signal an American shift towards political vengefulness so much as the falling standards of its politicians. American politicians are becoming ever more venal and unprincipled. Mr Trump is their standard bearer.
As ‘First Felon’, Mr Trump takes America into a grubby global club, of countries whose politics is marked by immorality, graft, lies and corruption.
