Bob Burns

A recent Reuters/Ipsos survey found that 55% of potential voters, including 51 % of GOP voters, would not support Donald Trump in the November election if he were convicted of any of the 91 felony charges against him distributed among four pending criminal trials. The public seems less moved by the fact that Mr. Trump has already been found liable in civil trials for fraud associated with Trump University, the Trump Foundation and intentional inflation of his property value to gain favorable loan rates as well as being found liable for sexual assault and twice defaming the character of his victim.

As a result of delay tactics initiated by the Trump defense counsels, the Georgia and DC trials centered around Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on our Capitol and his actions surrounding the taking, concealing and obstructing the investigation into hundreds of official classified government documents might not be held prior to the November election. The NY trial regarding his cooking Trump Corporation books to conceal payments to a porn star to buy her silence about a sexual affair with Trump is scheduled to proceed soon. It is not known what impact a conviction in that case will have on voters as it is considered to be less serious by some than the other pending trials and unlikely to include any jail time.

I respect the maxim that in our system of justice the accused should be considered innocent of criminal charges until found guilty by a court of law. We embrace this belief as a means of wrongly attaching criminal liability to a person prior to conviction. I also believe there is a critical difference between criminal liability and political accountability.

Our system of representative democracy includes the right, if not the responsibility, of the people to hold office seekers accountable for their words and actions regardless of whether those words or actions are found to be criminal in nature.

Unless one is leading the life of a hermit or embracing Trump’s alternative universe, we have been witness to Trump’s role in resisting the peaceful transfer of power by joining in a conspiracy to reverse the outcome of the 2020 Presidential Election including the Jan. 6, attack on our Capitol. Likewise we have seen the boxes of government documents carelessly stored at Mar-a- Lago and we know of his actions in obstructing the documents investigation. We also know that Mr. Trump has pledged to be a dictator on day one and he has boasted his election will empower him to seek vengeance on his critics. These are hardly the words of an advocate for democracy.

It may be that Mr. Trump will never be convicted or acquitted of a crime in his pending trials because of his delay tactics or the presence of MAGA supporters on a jury hearing the cases.

We can only hope the informed American voters will hold him politically accountable in November even in the absence of criminal convictions.

We embrace a very low standard of accountability if we do otherwise.