I’ve been saying this to whoever listens for quite some time…..
It jwould take care of a VERY sticky situation for those cept those who want the guy in jail or actually think he’d get a second term by beating FOUR criminal trials…..
My feeling IS this has a strong more than 50% chance of being the situation …..
The State and Fed’s would have to negotiate this….
With the Trumpists’s screaming and crying in the media in the background….
The question is how to guarantee that he never gets the chance. And though Trump may be facing four criminal indictments by summer’s end, with more possibly to come, there are fewer paths than most people might think—or hope.
Given those limits and a Republican party that has repeatedly allowed its rampaging former president to trample democracy, bold, creative thinking is necessary. For Trump, who fancies himself a master dealmaker, a particular deal comes to mind: allowing him to avoid prison if he agrees to drop out of the presidential race (or resign the presidency, if it came to that) and never run for public office again. Ever.
Practically speaking, this would take buy-in from multiple prosecutors and judges to work, a not inconsiderable hurdle. Democratic pollster Doug Schoen and former Rep. John LeBoutillier, an anti-Trump New York Republican, just floated a full-blown “universal plea agreement” in a weekend op-ed in the Messenger: Federal and state prosecutors suspend their criminal cases against Trump, while he “admits his guilt and accepts personal responsibility for his actions in each case,” withdraws from the campaign, and “agrees never to pursue any public office during the rest of his life.”
There are, of course, many more details and potential sticking points. Judges in each case would have to accept the plea deal and agree not to sentence Trump to prison or home confinement; who knows if all of them would. Caroline Mala Corbin, a constitutional law professor at the University of Miami, says such a deal would “seem to reward really bad behavior. . . . You can avoid the consequences that ordinary people have to face for the same crimes by just agreeing to forgo public office.” Furthermore, she told me in an email, “It is hard to imagine Trump ever admitting to wrongdoing” or voluntarily giving up his fame, fortune, and power.
LeBoutillier told me he’s known Trump since the early 1980s and “he will say anything to get out of trouble,” including if necessary an admission that “I’m guilty.” He’d later deny it and attack the prosecutors and the system, the former congressman predicted, but legally, that would be irrelevant. If he is facing jail, LeBoutillier said, “he will do it.”
Would this be unprecedented? Almost certainly. But then, the whole situation is unprecedented.
Would such a plea deal be legal or constitutional? Unclear, but in a case where the stakes for our constitutional system are already existential, it is worth exploring. And if it gets traction, the lawyers can fight it out.
They are state by state, and enough states are so closely divided that third-party candidates or the Electoral College could easily return Trump to the Oval Office.
That may be an outside chance, an irrational fear, but a miscalculation delivers to us King Donald, with his own personal army of federal leaders and policymakers to harness the government to the benefit of himself, his family, and his friends and cronies. We’ve seen it all before: weaponized government, corrupt pardons, violence against perceived enemies, China trademarks and Saudi investments, voter suppression, and power at all costs….
Very doubtful this would happen but if it did my understanding on the timing is that it would occur in late spring/early summer 2024. At that point Trump is likely to have the GOP nomination already sewn up and any deal to have him drop out would be seen by rank and file Republicans as DJT being forced into ir by a corrupt justice system and complicit GOP hierarchy.
The Republican party would basically be in ruins for the 2024 cycle.