Criminal justice is the best solution for Trump

Italy's experience with its Trump-forebear, Silvio Berlusconi, shows that only the law can control such shameless figures - and even then, not forever

It is easy to say what punishment should be meted out to Donald Trump for inciting the mob of his supporters to violence on January 6th, storming Washington, DC’s Capitol with the aim of intimidating Congress into overturning the results of last November’s elections. The punishment prescribed by the Founding Fathers was impeachment and conviction for such “high crimes and misdemeanours”, first by the House of Representatives and then in a formal trial by the Senate. If refusing to abide by the certified results of an election, perpetrating and steadily amplifying an evidence-free claim of fraud against the president-elect, and then inciting supporters to invade the seat of US democracy does not qualify as such a “high crime” then it is hard to imagine what would. Yet should is not the issue. The issue is what can and will be done, and above all what will be likeliest to work. And by “work” must be meant removing Trump personally from the political scene for as long a period as possible and reducing his political influence likewise.

If it looked likely that the required two-thirds majority in the Senate, which means at least 17 Republicans plus all 50 Democrats and Democrat-caucusing independents, would be achieved, then this would be the right course of action, even the process were to distract from the opening days and weeks of the Biden presidency. But we all know that this will not be achieved, for Republican leaders show every sign of wishing to shirk this responsibility and to avoid being pilloried by Trump and his mob. Familiar claims that Trump has “learned his lesson” by “touching the hot stove” have been trotted out, along with claims that a Senate trial would be “divisive”.

Impeachment and conviction just aren’t going to happen. The best that can be hoped for is a censure motion. As a result, there is no chance that the Senate will exercise its Constitutional power to disqualify Trump from running for office again. Wishful thinking, along with cowardice, will make sure of that: among Republicans (and a few quavering Democrats, admittedly) the hope will be that Trump’s power has peaked, that his humiliating failure both on November 3rd and on January 6th will mean that he will now fade from the scene. Not graciously, of course, but ineluctably.

Don’t count on it. In fact, don’t believe it for one minute. Even if there is a small chance that this prediction might prove true, the much larger chance that it is utterly wrong is the one to focus on. And if you don’t believe this, Italy has a great example to prove the case: Silvio Berlusconi.

Let’s not waste time arguing over whether Berlusconi and Trump committed equivalent crimes against their respective political systems, nor whether the damage done to their countries is the same. The circumstances of Berlusconi’s decades’-long dominance of Italian politics from 1994 onwards, including three spells as prime minister (1994-95; 2001-06; 2008-11), were very different to those of Trump, and the political systems of Italy and the United States are also very different. But, as was often commented upon during Trump’s 2016 election campaign and beyond, in many ways Trump was following a playbook pioneered by Berlusconi: the billionaire outsider entering politics, willing to break rules and flout conventions, skilled at using modern communication, totally shameless both in personal conduct and in telling lies, narcissistic to a fault, ruthless in demonising opponents and critics so as to foster division, determined to bend the system of government to serve his own interests.

Berlusconi did not incite a mob to invade the Italian parliament nor to overturn an electoral process. But he did deep damage to Italian politics, government, culture and indeed reputation. When he was pushed out of office in 2011, amid fears of a financial crisis and the crumbling of his own coalition, he was widely written off. The Berlusconi era was said to be over. After all, he had been discredited and his reputation as a strong leader hit the floor. Then in October 2012 he was convicted of tax fraud, sentenced to four years imprisonment and, as a result, was barred from running for public office for five years. The Senate voted to expel him from his seat in Parliament. Thanks to his age, he was able to swap his prison sentence for community service, working at a care home with dementia patients. As many remarked, this looked to be Berlusconi’s final humiliation: working with some of the few people unlikely to know who he was.

The Italian lesson is this. Criminal conviction and hence ineligibility to run for public office did work. It pushed Berlusconi out of the limelight for several years, long enough to break his grip on the right-wing of Italian politics. But look where he is now. At the age of 84 years old he has succeeded in making himself again an influential player in Italian politics, even if no longer dominant. In 2019, his ban from public office having expired, he was elected a Member of the European Parliament. His party, Forza Italia, still commands seats in parliament and 7-8% of the vote in opinion polls. Berlusconi may be down, but he certainly isn’t out.

The systems, situations and crimes of Trump and Berlusconi are different. But two essential characteristics are shared: shamelessness and narcissism. Neither Trump nor Berlusconi is capable of feeling “humiliated”, at least not for long, nor of feeling that they have done anything wrong. As narcissists, both crave the limelight. In fact, both feel they are barely alive if they are not the centre of attention. And everything they do or think is about them, their interests, their feelings, their celebrity, their power, their greatness.

Trump will not go away. He will not fade from the scene. He will not learn his lesson. He cannot even be relied upon, at the age of 74, to become too old for the political game. Berlusconi didn't, and at a decade older than Trump he still harbours dreams of being elected Italy’s president (a far less powerful post than the US presidency, but still constitutionally consequential) in 2022. People like them never call it a day and they never accept defeat nor acknowledge failure.

So here’s what needs to be done, given that Congress will not convict him. The full power of the criminal justice system needs be unleashed on Trump and his associates. It needs remorselessly to accrue the evidence of his crimes of all kinds, crimes in office including especially those on January 6th but also the financial crimes already under investigation in New York, and use the relatively impersonal nature of the justice system to bring him to account. This will have the merit of distancing President Biden himself from the issue, leaving it to the various prosecutorial and judicial authorities. Trump will certainly use legal proceedings against him to help build his narrative of victimhood, of witch hunts, which again follows the Berlusconi playbook. No matter. That just has to be endured. More important is that the prosecutions are careful, that they keep evidence of his crimes in the public eye, and of course that at least some of them result in convictions for felonies.

This is the only way to ensure that he does not run in 2024. It is the only way to ensure that Republican leaders and donors do not conveniently forget the outrage they have been expressing during the past few days. It is also, in truth, not just the only way but the right way to bring him to account for his crimes. This would not, unfortunately, bar him from running again for public office. But it would surely delay him from doing so and is the best way to reduce his chances of success. Trump will never go away, as long as he continues to walk and breathe. That needs to be kept in mind, by everyone in politics and beyond.