The manslaughter case against Donald Trump
More than 215,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 and millions more have been infected, including President Trump himself, his wife and son, his inner circle, and members of Congress. Now that Trump is again holding rallies endangering more people to the coronavirus, it is time to consider his legal accountability.
Recklessness has been the hallmark of Trump’s handling of the pandemic from the start. His flaunting of masks has placed millions of lives at risk. From his political supporters who attended his White House rallies after leaving the hospital, to Vice President Joe Biden, who shared the debate stage with him, the president has shown one consistent quality: caring for no one but himself.
Precedent teaches that the average citizen would not be able to escape criminal prosecution if he engaged in this kind of same brazen conduct.
In March 2015, a gas explosion destroyed a New York City residential and commercial building, killing two. The defendants had tapped a gas line that wasn’t theirs. The office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance convicted the building’s owner and two others of homicide.
In New York, a person is guilty of second-degree manslaughter when he “recklessly causes the death of another person.” And “a person acts recklessly with respect to a result or to a circumstance… when he is aware of and consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk.” In addition, a person can also be charged with assault where his reckless conduct causes serious injury.
Let’s consider the evidence against Donald Trump:
● Trump admitted to Bob Woodward knowing as early as January that COVID-19 was a deadly virus that spreads through the air via asymptomatic people;
● Since then, Trump has consciously disregarded the risk of from exposure and instead has undertaken a systematic COVID disinformation campaign:
■ Telling people that the virus would just disappear once the weather turned warm;
■ Mocking those wearing masks and not wearing one himself.
■ Encouraging people to attend packed political rallies, including in “hot spot” cities, without complying with CDC recommended social distancing and masks;
■ Pressuring state officials to lift restrictions on gatherings and threatening states with loss of federal funding if they refuse;
■ lying about children being unable to spread COVID-19 and saying that only seniors with health problems die from it;
■ Holding the recent Rose Garden ceremony to announce his Supreme Court nomination, with attendees packed closely together with no social distancing or masks, an event now thought to be a super-spreader source of COVID.
lOn Sept. 30, 2020, Trump learned that that one of his closest advisers, Hope Hicks, had begun to exhibit symptoms of COVID while with Trump at a Minnesota campaign rally and as a result was isolated from everyone on the return flight to Washington. Trump not only failed to immediately self-quarantine but held a fundraiser the next day in Bedminster, N.J., with more than 100 people, again without social distancing or face masks.
● On Oct. 5, 2020, when returning to the White House after leaving the hospital, Trump removed his face mask and then was observed standing near White House staff, potentially exposing them to the virus.
Criminally charging a public official with manslaughter and assault would be neither novel nor unprecedented. Michigan’s former head of Health and Human Services was charged with manslaughter for his role in Flint’s water crisis. The evidence showed that the defendant knew about an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease but failed to alert the public. That case is reportedly still under investigation.
While the U.S. Department of Justice has a decades-old policy that a sitting president cannot be indicted, there is no debate over whether a former president can be indicted for criminal conduct that occurred while in office. This explains why President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon for “all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed.”
Amid the pandemic, ordinary citizens have already been charged with crimes for not preventing the spread. In Massachusetts, parents of a teenager who hosted a party that led to an outbreak have been criminally charged.
If ordinary individuals are held to account, how can we not do the same for an official whose conduct has harmed thousands because he was aware of and consciously chose to disregard a substantial and unjustifiable risk of death and serious injury to innocent people?
Trump chose from the start to preserve his own power over protecting the people whom he swore to protect. He is responsible for their deaths. That is manslaughter. As the Supreme Court stated unanimously about a president in US v. Nixon, “No one is above the law.” Whether during or after his presidency, the law commands that Trump be held to account.