Why Is Individual-1 Still at Large?

The January 6th coup has been a distraction from the fact Trump should have been arrested for his proven crimes the minute he left office.

One thing was obvious even before last November’s election. Donald Trump was worried that losing to Joe Biden would lead to the former reality TV and bankruptcy court star getting arrested and potentially dying in prison.

His fears were clearly justified. His former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, had already gone to prison for a crime that he, Individual-1, would have done time for, too, except for the fact that the crime in question had turned Trump into the sitting president. For that alone, Trump could—and should—have been arrested and charged the minute he left office.

Part of Michael Cohen’s prison sentence was the result of him pleading guilty to two campaign-finance violations tied to hush money payments to adult-film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. These illegal payments were directed by Trump specifically to help him, the criminal identified in court as “Individual-1,” to cheat his way to the Presidency. As Cohen revealed in testimony to Congress, the criminal conspiracy didn’t end on Election Day. Trump brazenly committed an additional illegal act after he became President—signing a $35,000 personal check to Cohen in August 2017 to reimburse him for part of the hush money payments.

This case alone would have been enough to make Trump nervous about getting arrested. Beyond that, were also the 10+ known instances of criminal obstruction related to the Mueller investigation. Beyond that, there were his many, many financial crimes.

If Trump was afraid of prison, it was easy to imagine why: he knew what he had done.

That’s why inciting an insurrection was a no-lose proposition for America’s biggest, whiniest loser. On January 6th, as he watched on TV the attack he had incited, Trump knew that no matter how many of their fellow Americans these domestic terrorists killed, they were the ones in real legal jeopardy. As with his other acts of Stochastic Terrorism (such as the MAGA bomber, the El Paso shooter and the Kenosha killer), the psychopath Trump knew that Fox News and the corrupt GOP would do all they could to shield him from any real consequences. And who knew? Maybe if his terrorist army succeeded in killing a few Senators or Congresspeople—or even hanging Mike Pence—Trump could have found a way to use that “emergency” to justify staying in power beyond January 20th.

But now it’s June. Five months later. And America is in jeopardy.

If Trump is not punished for inciting the deadly insurrection, the failed coup not only becomes a “dress rehearsal.” It also allows Trump to: a) keep alive The Big Lie that Biden’s landslide victory didn’t happen; and b) use that lie to distract from his other, clearly provable crimes by calling any legitimate investigations into those crimes “political persecution.”

In addition, if Trump gets away with the multiple instances of obstruction he committed during the Mueller investigation, no President will be held accountable for criminal actions in office ever again.

So while the January 6th coup failed on one level, it succeeded in one big way: We’ve spent the last five months talking about the insurrection instead of asking why Individual-1 wasn’t arrested the day he left office.

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