By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.comÂ
INDIANAPOLIS – Years ago, when I was still a newspaper reporter, I investigated a state elected official’s office.
It wasn’t pretty.
John Krull, publisher, TheStatehouseFile.com
What I found was that a couple of senior male staff members had sexually harassed a young female staffer. Another staffer had pilfered state funds to use for routine personal purposes – paying rent, covering credit card bills and buying groceries. There were credible accusations that several male staffers had had sex with a college-age female intern. Evidence showed that other staffers had used state vehicles and other property on private business. And so on.
What struck me then was how mundane it all was.
Unlike in the movies, there was no big smoking gun – no mythic ah-ha moment that tied everything together so that the wrong of the guilty parties was clear to any and all.
Instead, it was the accumulation of one small but sordid detail on top of another and another and another that revealed just how complete – and how completely banal – the corruption in that office was.
It’s looking like Donald Trump’s presidency will unravel in the same fashion.
The nation’s focus now is on the impeachment struggle that was triggered by the now-infamous phone call in which Trump asked Ukraine’s president to do him a “favor†and dig up dirt on a political rival.
There already is and will continue to be intense debate about whether Trump’s transgression should be considered an impeachable offense.
But the reality is that the Ukraine investigation is only one of the many threats now facing this president.
A federal appellate court just ruled that two banks with whom President Trump has done business must comply with subpoenas from Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives and hand over his financial records. A similar case involving Trump’s accountants may force him to cough up his tax records.
The president has fought long and hard to keep any details of his business dealings from becoming public. He is the first president since Richard Nixon not to release his tax returns and place his assets in some sort of blind trust.
When he was running for president, Trump said his reason for refusing to release his tax returns was that he was being audited by the Internal Revenue Service – unjustly, he strongly implied.
The excuse worked with only the terminally gullible.
It’s hard to think of an American institution more reviled and despised than the IRS. If the tax collectors were persecuting Trump, revealing just how they were victimizing him only would have garnered him sympathy.
The more likely reality is that release of those financial records will show that, during one or more of the president’s serial bankruptcies, he borrowed or accepted money from some sources he shouldn’t have, such as Russian oligarchs. One of the banks involved in the recent court ruling is notorious for laundering Russian money.
If he’s still taking money from any foreign source, he’s violating the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution.
A transgression of that nature will be difficult for Republicans in Congress to explain or wish away, much as they might want to and as hard as they likely will try to do so.
These are only two of the challenges confronting the president.
Others are being mounted at the state level.
Again, it’s not anyone thing that is doing the damage. It is the slow but steady accumulation of one small but sordid detail upon another upon another that is making clear just how compromised this president and his presidency are.
If an end comes soon for Donald Trump’s presidency, the conclusion likely won’t be the product of a moment of high drama.
Instead, it will be the result of a lot of little ones.
And we Americans will be left to ponder just how small, even petty, were the temptations that toppled a president.
Footnote: John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.
This article was posted by the City-County Observer without bias or editing.
