Elite Impunity Paved the Way for Trump‘s Post-Presidency Enrichment, Experts Warn
WASHINGTON D.C. – The escalating examples of Donald Trump leveraging his post-presidency for personal financial gain, including pardons for associates and arranging business meetings for his children with foreign leaders, are not aberrations but the predictable outcome of a decades-long trend of unequal justice, according to legal and political analysts. The failure of successive administrations, including the Biden administration, to address a deeply entrenched “two-track” system of law enforcement – one punitive for most citizens and one lenient for the powerful – created the conditions for Trump’s current behavior and continues to fuel his enduring political appeal.
The core argument, detailed in recent analyses by The Intercept and the Guardian, centers on the perception that the rule of law has been fundamentally perverted. This perception, observers say, was a key component of the early MAGA movement’s resonance. Rather than a system of equal application, a “carceral system” relentlessly pursues ordinary citizens while the elite operate with near impunity.
Despite entering office following a failed coup attempt and with historically low public sentiment towards his predecessor, the Biden administration’s attempt to restore pre-Trump norms through conventional enforcement mechanisms proved ineffective. The Justice Department, led by Attorney general Merrick Garland, sought to revert to the enforcement styles of the 1990s and 2000s, but this approach demonstrably failed to curb the influence of powerful actors.
Elon Musk, for example, has continued to “flout the law with impunity,” according to The Intercept, even as his power has grown. He’s been accused of violating laws related to Dogecoin and faced lawsuits regarding lottery practices, yet has faced no significant repercussions. Furthermore, Musk’s increasing influence within the Pentagon budget, through SpaceX, highlights the unchecked power of elite interests.
This lack of accountability allowed an “embittered trump” to face no real consequences for his prior corruption – a “worst-case scenario” that has now materialized. Trump has recently pardoned business associates, as reported by Bloomberg, and is actively setting up meetings between his children and foreign leaders to advance their business interests, as documented by The Guardian. He is also reportedly growing his personal wealth through ventures linked to cryptocurrency, as The Intercept revealed.
“Trump is an extreme example, but he is the logical extreme,” analysts argue. His actions aren’t isolated incidents but the unavoidable result of a system that tolerates,and even encourages,elite impunity.
The failure isn’t attributed to strategic errors but to a fundamental flaw in the system itself – an inability to address “undue elite influence that’s baked into the very essence of the way we became accustomed to enforcing the law.” Simply electing “more reasonable politicians” will not solve the problem, experts contend.
The current situation demands a fundamental reassessment of priorities, with Democrats needing to define “who they really are – and who they’ll fight for,” as The Intercept recently noted. Without a commitment to dismantling the two-tiered justice system, the appeal of figures like Trump, who capitalize on public distrust and resentment, will remain firmly entrenched.
