Prosecuting Trump Criminality — Let's Start Documenting Now

The US will need its own Nuremberg Tribunal.

No Kings Day Protest on the US Capitol grounds organized by the 50501 Movement on February 17, 2025. Photo credit: Geoff Livingston / Flickr (CC BY 2.0 DEED)

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A couple of months ago, although I shared the widespread despondency and paralysis about the Trump machine’s victory and seemingly unstoppable wave of destruction, it occurred to me that the crisis would avert itself. I posited that, as they set fires to everything, they, too, would certainly perish.

It’s happening faster than I imagined. New polling already shows Donald Trump’s popularity slipping and the public feeling he is going too far.

Farmers, who supported Trump heavily, are growing worried about the impact of tariffs and trade war on their bottom line.

Some judges at least are standing up to Trump’s intimidation.

None other than Trump fanboy and election-denier Jesse Watters of Fox News took to the airwaves to plead with Trump to spare a friend of his at the Pentagon who had been Doge’d out of a job.

Even Republican senators are starting to make small noises here and there — and I don’t mean flatulence.

It surely occurs to many GOP officeholders that Trump and his whirlwind of destruction will destroy their party and end up ruining all of their careers and lives. I wouldn’t be totally surprised if, at some point in the next four years, at least a few decide that they have to get in front of this and support impeaching the man.

I’d propose thinking even further down the road. I don’t think it’s too early at all to start thinking about how we have to treat these criminals when their day comes.

On some level, perhaps every level, Trump, Elon Musk, and their colleagues actually know — actually understand — that what they are doing is illegal, criminal, and meets or exceeds the definition of corrupt.

And even demonstrates a depraved indifference to life.

They are fully aware that what they are doing is a power grab that can reap huge rewards for themselves — but also realize that if they do not completely succeed with their rampage, their actions could come back and destroy them.

So it’s important, now, to formally and very publicly begin calling this monstrosity out for what it is. If the Europeans can make moves against a foreigner, Benjamin Netanyahu, for the enormous civilian carnage in Gaza, then surely we can start reckoning with our very own menace, Donald J. Trump, right now.

They Know, But Don’t Want You To Know

You probably know the dictum: If you’re going to fire at a powerful person, you’d better not just wound him, you had better kill him. This, I think, is why Trump and Company are doing everything so crudely, massively, quickly. They know they must completely immobilize and destroy all independent power centers.

I understand this from my coverage of uprisings and revolts abroad over the years. If they were stoppable, they were crushed. Otherwise, their instigators took over. It was either/or.

I keep noting the admiration the Trump people have for the Nazis and their latter-day clones like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. They also of course admire Vladimir Putin and the Russian oligarchs who are complicit in his almost totalitarian regime, and their step-by-step destruction of all independent media, political opposition, educational institutions, and speech.

And yet, to divert the wrath of an aroused populace, Trump, Musk, and their enablers, hedge. That’s why they’re pivoting to bland explanations and characterizations — euphemisms and misleading generalities — for extreme actions.

To demonstrate “transparency,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt holds up documents — the contents of which no one can possibly read at that distance — and claims they are “proof” of various examples of waste, fraud, and corruption. (So reminiscent of former Trump spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany holding up her big blue binders, containing who knows what.)

Leavitt seems confident that no one will call her bluff, but go here for an exquisite dissection of the outright lies promoted by this regime.

I don’t doubt the existence of waste, fraud, and corruption. We’ve written about it extensively. And it exists everywhere. Which doesn’t necessarily mean most of what any institution does is not valuable — or vital. But here’s what we don’t know:

How many more of Leavitt’s examples are outright false?

Is her information taken out of context? Is she omitting something essential that would completely change the interpretation?

How representative are the examples she cites? If they represent a very small percent of the total, they are deceptively selected.

How many critical, life-saving, even planet-saving programs are being thrown out — falsely labeled as “waste”?

Further evidence of Trumptists’ hedging is Musk continuing his rash course while also backing away from responsibility for DOGE’s actions, claiming that: (a) he isn’t a government employee; (b) he’s carrying out the president’s executive orders; (c) mysterious others in DOGE are driving everything.

In any case, they are, as noted above, continually blasting away at any potential challengers or countervailing institutions, in an attempt to neuter all potential opposition, destroy the accountability systems built into our checks-and-balances governmental structure, and ensure that no one can come after them for their crimes.

‘It’s a Crime in Progress’

I think it’s time, right now, to declare their actions illegal, criminal, and, perhaps as importantly, corrupt. And to begin, without further delay, to move toward a time in the not so distant future when this criminal lot can be prosecuted for their actions.

It’s already time to start collecting evidence for our own citizens-driven Nuremberg Tribunal. And we need to decide how, with such a captured Supreme Court, this can be accomplished.

Why would I say “Nuremberg”? I’ve previously noted comparisons between how the Trump people behave and how the Nazis behaved — while also acknowledging the obvious and substantial differences. And I commented, like many, on Musk’s straight-arm salute. Now, Musk’s enemy within the Trump universe, Steve Bannon, perhaps trying to prove his loyalty to the twisted cause, a few days ago did his own quasi-Sieg Heil at a conference.

View of the defendants in the dock at the International Military Tribunal trial of war criminals in Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany, November 1945. Photo credit: Raymond D’Addario / Wikimedia (PD)

The Washington Post generously suggested that all this might be a tactic, or “trolling” the opposition. I’d say it’s time to call a spade a spade. Even the leader of France’s far-right party, as the Post noted, “saw fit to cancel his own planned CPAC speech over Bannon’s ‘gesture alluding to Nazi ideology.’ ”

And here’s another Nazi thing: Sabotage from within. The Nazis counted on and rewarded supporters throughout the Weimar government spying on and sabotaging the democracy.

Now we find out that Leland Dudek, an obscure data analyst working in a small anti-fraud office, was being investigated by the Social Security Administration for sneaking unauthorized access to confidential information to the Musk team. He also sent harassing emails to employees in the personnel and security divisions, urging them to let several DOGE engineers start work and gain access to the agency’s computer systems.

Then, suddenly, Trump elevated him to the post of acting Social Security commissioner.

All this suggests that we’re just beginning to discover a few rocks shaking loose from a mountain of perfidy. Crimes, absolutely — in many cases. The time to raise this? Right now.

To succeed, we need to know whether the active and retired military leadership understand their responsibility to protect Americans and democracy and to prevent a criminal enterprise from destroying the country.

And we need to keep a weather eye on Trump’s steps to purge the Pentagon of potentially “disloyal” (to him) leaders, a process that has already begun.

We need to know that Democrats who have been on the stage too long and lost their mojo are ready to step aside for more aggressive, more dynamic leadership who would not hesitate to call this what it is, and be willing to build, or at least plan, an apparatus for an eventual reckoning.

We need to start right now with concrete, nationally organized efforts to take back Congress in 2026. And that means getting damned serious about protecting voting rights and bringing transparency to the vote-counting process

This is especially urgent in light of the Trump administration’s ongoing attempts to gut the agencies responsible for keeping our elections honest — like the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) — and to seize control of the United States Postal Service, which will be be pivotal in future elections, now that so many voters avail themselves of mail-in ballots.

The purging of the Pentagon and other security agencies and installation of Trump-loyal personnel is red-alert alarming.

By underlining, very publicly, that we believe a crime spree is taking place, we’re on record — and the public is warned — that accountability is coming. It might make some think twice about what they’re participating in.

Of course, we must consider the blank check the current SCOTUS has given Trump to do seemingly anything (no matter how bad). That means getting on the offensive about wrongdoing may have to start with intense scrutiny of the judiciary, including the kinds of people Trump himself installed at the Supreme Court, and whether deals were made.

It’s all complicated — and uncertain — but this is the time to begin clarifying, and hashing it out.

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