What can Trump do in recent weeks?

For the next two months, before Joe Biden takes office, Donald Trump will be the outgoing president of the United States and will continue to have most of his powers. Many are wondering how he will use these last few weeks in office, since he does not seem to intend to behave like other defeated presidents of the past, and what consequences it could have on the Biden administration. Some news of the last few days can already give an idea of ​​what awaits us.

Monday, in fact, Trump he fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper, with whom he had long had bad relations and who had already had a resignation letter ready for weeks, explained CNN. The decision is not directly tied to the elections: their relations had begun to deteriorate in 2019, when Esper recommended that Trump restore economic aid to Ukraine, which the president had blocked to press for local authorities to investigate. on the story of Biden’s son (that’s the story that Trump was then impeached for). Esper had also taken a stand against the use of the army to crack down on Black Lives Matter protests in the summer.

But it seems that Esper’s dismissal may be followed by several others. According to the American newspapers, in fact, Trump had long intended to use the period immediately following the elections – both in the event of victory and defeat – to get rid of several members of the administration that he has long badly supported, but which he could not kick out before the vote to avoid controversy harmful to the election campaign. Esper was one of the prime suspects, but there are others after him. One is Christopher Wray, director of the FBI, whom Trump has long criticized for not sufficiently supporting the allegations of electoral fraud by the White House and the alleged threat from activists. ANTIFA.

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Sources in the administration confirmed to the American media that Wray’s dismissal has long been the subject of discussion, as well as that of Gina Haspel, director of the CIA whom Trump accuses of wanting to delay the publication of some documents which, according to him, would prove the the existence of a conspiracy of the “deep state” – the expression with which the US bureaucratic apparatus is sometimes indicated – to its detriment.

By himself, Biden could re-appoint Wray and Hespel once he was in office if they were fired – and he would still be able to choose people he trusts for those positions. But such a decision by Trump would cause a great deal of chaos at the top of intelligence and defense, which many believe could put US national security at risk in the coming months and which would make even more evident the politicization of posts that, before Trump , they had been more separated from the executive. All in a particularly delicate moment such as the transition between one administration and another.

Another who has been put on the list of those who risk the job is Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a principal scientific adviser to the White House. In one of the last rallies before the elections, Trump had not too implicitly said that he could have fired him immediately after the elections. Biden for his part said he would hire him instead.

Emily Sydnor, a political science professor at Southwestern University, has explained a Bloomberg that “when there is a president at the end of his term, there are few counterweights to his chances of exercising executive power”. Without the worry of having to submit to the vote again, the only brake on the president’s action is de facto practice and respect for institutional traditions: aspects that Trump has often ignored.

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In addition to the layoffs, which may include other administration figures as well, there is talk of Trump using the power of presidential pardon. This would not be new: most presidents, in the last weeks of their mandate, have sometimes resorted to it with controversial decisions, as when Bill Clinton pardoned his stepbrother Roger Clinton for an old conviction for possession and sale of cocaine. Barack Obama, however, before leaving the White House decided among other things to commute Chelsea Manning’s penalty, the former US military analyst sentenced to 35 years for providing confidential materials to Wikileaks.

Second CNN, Trump may decide to pardon Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser, who had bargained for lying to the FBI after being involved in the Russia investigation. Attorney Paul Manafort and former adviser George Papadopulous are two other figures convicted in the Robert Mueller investigation and who could be pardoned by Trump.

But there is also another possibility that is being discussed with increasing insistence: that Trump decides to pardon himself, to try to avoid some of the different processes who are probably waiting for him out of the White House, and without presidential immunity. The Constitution does not explicitly prohibit it, and jurists and constitutionalists have long been debating whether it can be done. The most shared indication is that no, it is not constitutional: but Trump could try anyway. And even, Trump could grant “preemptive” pardon – so before there are formal indictments – to his family members, who could be involved in some financial investigations related to the Trump Organization. However, these provisions would eventually only apply to federal crimes: and many of the crimes Trump and his company are accused of are actually state crimes.

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Trump will also have the opportunity to address several outstanding issues with executive decrees, legislative instruments that do not require congressional approval and which he has used extensively in the past. Second Bloomberg, Trump could make decisions to deliberately put Biden in trouble: for months there has been talk of a partial reform of immigration laws, in a more restrictive sense, which could become very complicated to manage for the next administration.

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