Superseding Indictment: 2024 Election a Referendum on Trump Pardoning Himself

The news and the known evidence last night about the superseding indictment in the Donald Trump Florida documents case convinces me that he is in greater jeopardy of a criminal conviction than ever before.  I do not claim expertise on the criminal law, but every nationally renowned criminal lawyer I have read or heard within the last 24 hours expresses this conclusion.

This jeopardy of a criminal conviction may skyrocket if as anticipated, Special Counsel Jack Smith obtains an indictment from a federal grand jury in Washington on the January 6 charges. These matters involve the accumulating mountain of evidence that Trump attempted to steal the 2020 presidential election by use of fake electors and pressuring the then Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to conduct the lawful electoral vote count.

A Trump conviction on January 6 charges would become a virtual certainty by the cooperation with Jack Smith of former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.  I was very impressed with the observation of Chris Christie that Meadows has been recently acting like a cooperating witness.

I often criticized Christie’s gubernatorial record, but he was without question one of the greatest US Attorneys in New Jersey history.  His observations on the Trump investigations thus have total credibility with me.

What I cannot understand is WHY Trump went to such lengths to hide the documents and obstruct justice in the Florida case.  Had he simply cooperated with the request to deliver the documents, he would have certainly avoided prosecution.  Did he view the pilfered documents as a monetization opportunity?

The presidential election of 2024 is now a life-and-death struggle for Donald Trump to avoid jail by winning and pardoning himself, although the pardon would not cover the Georgia charges. The national leadership of the Republican Party knows this, and they are totally in the tank with Trump.  They are followers of the religion of MAGA and the sect of Kevin McCarthyism, a contemptible cult of fascistic collaboration, more profoundly nefarious than Joe McCarthyism ever was.

MAGA and Kevin McCarthyism will succeed in getting overwhelming support from grassroots Republicans, both for the election of Trump and for his self- pardoning if he wins.  Among independent voters, however, support for Trump will dwindle to subterranean levels once they become aware that Trump election means Trump self-pardon.  The elimination of independent support will doom Trump’s election chances.

If Trump comes to realize that his election chances are doomed, along with his self-pardon option, he may well explore the possibility of an omnibus plea deal, both with Jack Smith and Fani Willis in Georgia.  Terms of such a deal would include at a minimum no jail for Trump if he pleads guilty and agrees to no longer seek the presidency.  Shades of the nolo contendere plea bargain of Spiro Agnew with the Maryland US Attorney’s office in 1973.

The conventional wisdom is that Trump is too arrogant and has too much hubris to consider a plea deal.  Perhaps.

I do believe, however, that Trump lives in terror of going to jail.  If his terror of prison exceeds his hubris, I believe he would attempt a plea bargain. I have no psychiatric credentials, however, so I cannot predict the outcome of the inner war between Trump’s hubris and nightmares of prison.  Stay tuned.

Alan J. Steinberg served as regional administrator of Region 2 EPA during the administration of former President George W. Bush and as executive director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission.

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