Decency, Sense, and the Maximum Felon

This past Thursday, a jury convicted the 45th president of having falsified business records as part of a scheme just before the 2016 election to prevent the revelation of an alleged 2006 sexual encounter with a porn star. That night, the current representative of Colorado House District 39 registered her objection to the verdict by changing her official Facebook profile picture to an inverted United States flag – the sign of distress that some of the January 6 insurrectionists carried as they rallied outside the Capitol and assaulted police to gain unlawful entry. After a Facebook user commented enthusiasm for her adoption of the symbol, she replied with an image that stated, “I am more MAGA now than ever.”

This response is puzzling. Over the last several years the civil and criminal justice systems have made abundantly clear what a loathsome individual the 45th president is. His felony conviction is only the latest official legal marker of his turpitude.

Consider some recent developments.

• In 1995 or 1996, the man who would decades later become the 45th president sexually assaulted a writer named E. Jean Carroll. We know this to be true because Ms. Carroll proved it in two civil trials, one of which came to a decision in May 2023 and the other in January 2024. The 45th president owes Ms. Carroll $88.3 million in damages.

• Over the course of many years, the man who would become the 45th president committed massive fraud in the conduct of his real estate business. As a result of a civil suit concluded in February 2024, he is obliged to pay $355 million plus interest to New York State.

• Over the course of many years, through his Donald J. Trump Foundation, the man who would become the 45th president cheated charities by diverting for his private and political purposes funds that were supposed to go to them. In December 2019, a court ordered that he pay the eight charities – Army Emergency Relief, the Children’s Aid Society, Citymeals-on-Wheels, Give an Hour, Martha’s Table, the United Negro College Fund, the United Way of National Capital Area, and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum – $250,000 each, or $2 million and that the remaining $1.8 million from the account of the dissolved Trump Foundation also be distributed among the charities. 

• Over the course of many years, the man who would become the 45th president operated a fraudulent enterprise called “Trump University.” In April 2018 a federal court finalized a $25 million settlement to compensate the roughly 7,000 students he cheated.

• In July 2023, a federal grand jury handed up an indictment superseding that which it had handed up the previous month. It detailed the deceptive lengths to which the 45th president and his accomplices went to obstruct the federal government’s efforts to retrieve some of the country’s most sensitive documents.

• In August 2023, a Fulton County, Georgia grand jury indicted the 45th president for his participation in a multifaceted racketeering conspiracy to subvert the 2020 presidential election.

• In August 2023, a federal grand jury indicted the 45th president for three criminal conspiracies in which he participated to subvert the 2020 election.

• In January 2023, the January 6 Committee made available a final tranche of materials it had collected in connection with its investigation of the efforts of the 45th president and his accomplices to overturn the 2020 election, culminating in the violent attack on the Capitol that he personally incited and which he declined to address for hours as a mob injured police, endangered the lives of members of Congress, and threatened to lynch Vice President Mike Pence. The January 6 Committee extensively expanded upon the materials presented at the February 2021 impeachment trial of the 45th president. At the conclusion of that trial, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell excoriated the 45th president. He spoke accurately when he made the following statements:

  • Former President Trump’s actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful dereliction of duty.

  • There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day. The issue is not only the President’s intemperate language on January 6th. It is not just his endorsement of remarks in which an associate urged ‘trial by combat.’ It was also the entire manufactured atmosphere of looming catastrophe; the increasingly wild myths about a reverse landslide election that was being stolen in some secret coup by our now-President.

  • Sadly, many politicians sometimes make overheated comments or use metaphors that unhinged listeners might take literally. This was different. This was an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories, orchestrated by an outgoing president who seemed determined to either overturn the voters’ decision or else torch our institutions on the way out.

  • The unconscionable behavior did not end when the violence began. Whatever our ex-President claims he thought might happen that day… whatever reaction he says he meant to produce… by that afternoon, he was watching the same live television as the rest of the world. A mob was assaulting the Capitol in his name. These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags, and screaming their loyalty to him. It was obvious that only President Trump could end this. Former aides publicly begged him to do so. Loyal allies frantically called the Administration. But the President did not act swiftly. He did not do his job. He didn’t take steps so federal law could be faithfully executed, and order restored. Instead, according to public reports, he watched television happily as the chaos unfolded. He kept pressing his scheme to overturn the election!

  • Even after it was clear to any reasonable observer that Vice President Pence was in danger… even as the mob carrying Trump banners was beating cops and breaching perimeters… the President sent a further tweet attacking his Vice President.

  • Later, even when the President did halfheartedly begin calling for peace, he did not call right away for the riot to end. He did not tell the mob to depart until even later. And even then, with police officers bleeding and broken glass covering Capitol floors, he kept repeating election lies and praising the criminals.

  • In recent weeks, our ex-President’s associates have tried to use the 74 million Americans who voted to re-elect him as a kind of human shield against criticism. Anyone who decries his awful behavior is accused of insulting millions of voters. That is an absurd deflection. 74 million Americans did not invade the Capitol. Several hundred rioters did. And 74 million Americans did not engineer the campaign of disinformation and rage that provoked it. One person did.

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I am confident that the decent and sensible people in House District 39 who oppose the 45th president outnumber those who, for whatever reasons, thirst for his restoration. Perhaps someday – perhaps in retrospect – the current representative of House District 39 will reconsider her own position.