The Trump Presidency’s War on White-Collar Crime: Post-Election Scenarios for Criminology and the Country

• In Event: Presidential Panel: The Trump Aftermath: The Future of Criminology in a Divided Nation

Abstract

Not since the time of Watergate has there been such prima facie evidence of serious wrongdoing at the highest levels of government. The Trump administration has engaged in a war on white-collar crime that is unprecedented in modern history; unlike other policy wars such as “the` war on drugs” or the “war on poverty,” this war isn’t designed to prevent or control. Efforts by the administration to deny its role in election and campaign violations involving the influence of a foreign adversary, to extort another country, to influence impeachment hearings, to erode media credibility, and to shamelessly attack, with the intent to delegitimize, legal and intelligence agencies that could shed light on presidential wrongdoing are but one aspect of a larger existential war against elite white-collar crime altogether. Official efforts to normalize condemnation of condemners over the past four years has thus far proved to be a valuable weapon aimed at denying effective labeling and legal condemnation of presidential offenses. Other tactics used in this war involve massive deregulation that necessarily acts against the discovery of a broad array of white-collar and corporate offenses (i.e., “non-issue making”), and the pardoning of notorious white-collar criminals, which further normalizes and trivializes such acts. Using concepts and theories from white-collar criminology, this presentation examines potential post-election outcomes of this war on both the field of criminology and the country.

Author

• Henry Pontell, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY