He promised to be the law and order president and the jobs president. Barely halfway through his second year in office, President Trump has succeeded where his predecessors, either for a lack of imagination or a surplus of character, failed before him: He has stimulated all sorts of work at the Department of Justice.
Not only was his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, found guilty of eight financial crimes against the United States, on the very same historic day Trump’s longtime fixer-lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to five counts of tax evasion and another three of making excessive campaign contributions to a candidate. Federal crimes all, those sixteen counts require some historical context to appreciate fully.
Trump promised to surround himself with the best people and — boy, oh boy — did he deliver. National security adviser Michael Flynn, guilty! Campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, guilty! Deputy campaign chair Rick Gates, guilty!
What’s more, Trump seems like he is just getting started. Consider the early score so far. President Barack Obama would have gone a whole eight years without a single executive branch conviction if it wasn’t for a certain CIA director whose mistress had an insatiable appetite for classified material. While President George W. Bush racked up five convictions under his watch before him, the biggest one he had to offer is a VP’s chief of staff who barely managed to obstruct justice.
But it wasn’t just that the Obama and Bush administrations let the Department of Justice atrophy under their watch. It was that they failed to capture the imagination of the public.
When the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library opens sometime in the future, a whole section must be set aside for the scandals and slanders of his administration. Tourists can enjoy a cosmopolitan and globalist experience as they are dazzled by exhibits about secretly-recorded dramas and dalliances with Ukrainian oligarchs in his inner circle.
This won’t be another boring museum with dusty old relics commemorating the ho-hum administrations of dead presidents, though. No, the Trump Library will include some exhibits absolutely unsuitable for eighth grade eyes (unless accompanied by adult supervision). The mature history buff will have an opportunity to learn about his pre-presidential stable of whores and the extra-marital affairs which landed him in legal trouble. The orniphile can take in an ostrich-skin jacket that was part of a fraud scheme.
So when the tour groups tire of hearing about the Trump tax cuts or the Trump Supreme Court justices — when they get tired of winning — they can skip over to the Stormy Daniels showroom. Ever the showman, this president will entertain and delight generations long after he is gone.
Of course, Trump can’t take all the credit for a re-invigorated Department of Justice. His brash arrogance certainly provided the raw material, yes. But it will be the constitutional structure of our government which shapes and forms his legacy. Trump will stand, for as long as the republic endures, as a testament to the fact that character really does count and that no one is above the law — not even the best people.
