Donald Trump as the Houdini of State-Organized Crime: A Snapshot of an Unconstitutional U.S. President

• In Event: Crime, Law, Justice and the Trump Administration 1: Punishment, Impunity, and Corruption

Abstract

The groups of victims who will be harmed by the re-election of Donald Trump to a second term as president -- America’s first state-organized criminal to hold the position – include a whole lot of people worldwide. These victims can be classified into three groups: victims anywhere of social, political, and economic injustice; victims of racial, sexual, and cultural discrimination targeting persons residing in this country; and the victims of the abuse of political and economic power who make up the tens of thousands of career civil servants or federal workers in general and those prosecutorial lawyers and FBI agents employed by the Department of Justice in particular. Other victims of America First policies include most of those people who voted for or against Trump in 2024, the normative institutions of a liberal democracy, the constitutional rules of due process, and the global political economy. This paper loosely tracks the immediate harm and potential longer-term harm that revolves around and is facilitated by the behavioral actions, executive orders, and rhetorical discourses used during the first two weeks of the first anti-law and unconstitutional president of the United States.

Author

• Gregg Barak, Eastern Michigan University