A Criminal Conviction!

… And an Exceptional Opportunity

During the Covid-19 pandemic, and more strongly after the January 6, 2021, violent insurrection against the government, my colleagues and I called for a criminal arrest of the then-president as a form of accountability and limit setting.  The reason for this was not partisan or political but medical, as a potentially effective method for countering Trump Contagion and reining in behavior that could infectiously sweep through the country.  Of course, this never happened, but the law can be enlisted—and often is, sometimes explicitly in the form of “therapeutic jurisprudence”—to intervene with situations where public health or safety may be of concern.  This is a role of forensic mental health experts such as myself, with which the public may be less familiar.

Whereas a swift arrest and consequences are most effective—even the usual prosecution time is too long for the short attention spans of most dangerous personalities, if deterrence were the goal—more than three years since our last recommendations, on May 30, 2024, a criminal justice intervention finally happened.  And it was not the Department of Justice, the U.S. Supreme Court, or even a federal court but a New York State trial court that would confer Donald Trump a felony conviction on thirty-four counts for falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal that may have changed the 2016 U.S. presidential election outcome.

Criminal courts are the most rigorous in procedure, and in my experience of being an expert witness for courts around the country, New York City courts, as chaotic as they are, are the most heavily watched by civil rights advocates and therefore far less corruptible than the more respectable-appearing rural courts.  This one took into account that the hush-money payment was “no minor peccadillo but … an offense amounting to election interference—a precursor to his alleged 2020 election interference,” according to former White House Special Counsel for Ethics and Government Reform Norman Eisen.  It delivered a guilty verdict, at the highest standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt,” providing Americans with vital information about a presidential candidate before they vote.  This is more than the federal courts, paralyzed with partisan judges such as Trump-appointed Aileen Cannon and the right-wing extremist majority on the Supreme Court (half of which was Trump-appointed), can say.

It is a major milestone that could potentially break a psychological barrier: Donald Trump is now a “convicted felon.”  This is important, not only because it is unprecedented for a former president or a presidential candidate, but because his mystical allure depended on his impunity for insurgent behavior.  Twelve ordinary citizens holding an ex-president accountable, upon hearing the evidence and applying the law, is a powerful statement.  Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor who brought the case, showed utmost professionalism.  The judge, Juan Merchan, went out of his way to be fair, ruling even that the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape (in which Trump said he could “grab [women] by the p***y”) could not be played in court, saying that it was prejudicial.  The integrity and firmness of a criminal justice system is important for society, even if it does not touch the criminal defendant much: the guiltier they are, the more prone they will be to believing that they are being “persecuted”.

Of course, Donald Trump, now freed from his five-week captivity, went out immediately to Trump Tower to call the trial “rigged” and driven by politics.  Most dangerously, he said: “If they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone.”  And to alleviate intolerable feelings about himself, he projected: “These are bad people.  These are, in many cases, I believe, sick people.”  This mobilized his “base” into calling for riots and violent retribution, including attacks on jurors, execution of the judge, and outright civil war and armed insurrection.  “Someone in NY with nothing to lose needs to take care of Merchan,” wrote one member on a Trump-aligned website.  “Time to start capping some leftys,” said another.  “This cannot be fixed by voting.”  And still another said: “1,000,000 men (armed) need to go to Washington and hang everyone.  That’s the only solution.”  They vowed: “Trump should already know he has an army willing to fight and die for him if he says the words….  I’ll take up arms if he asks.”

It should be recognized that these are typical responses of violent gangs that operate by an alternative “justice” system that they take into their own hands, organizing around loyalty to the gang leader.  Gang leaders may make extreme demands, such as that a new member kill a police officer or a random homeless person as a rite of passage, much as with the recruitment of child soldiers, who may be commanded to kill members of their own family.  After making such extreme sacrifices, it is ensured that members cannot turn back.  The same is true for the greatest Trump devotees, who have now endured defending him through a foreign enemy-meddled 2016 election; a pandemic that took more American lives than all the wars since the Civil War combined; a lost 2020 election that he claimed he “won”; and now a verdict that he claims was “rigged”.  The way to stop the contagion is to incarcerate and incapacitate the “primary person” with severe symptoms from continuing to transmit their emotions, attitudes, ideas, and behavior through exposure.

Donald Trump could face up to four years in jail from his conviction, but not for another six weeks, or he may simply be given probation as a first-time convict.  His inevitable, endless appeals could also take years while he roams free, intensifying his campaign for the presidency, which nothing bars him from serving from prison—and which his die-hard followers would not preclude.  All this is an enormous challenge, but the healthy segment of society should recognize an extraordinary opportunity and make use of this exceptional window—for dangerous personalities are actually weak, and “strongmen” are in truth paper tigers.  Truth, reality, and intelligent use of our institutions are real strengths that they do not have and cannot match.  If we could apply the ordinary standards of law enforcement or mental health, in ways commensurate with the violence he incites—and now we can do so more than ever before, as Trump is a “convicted felon”—it would be a powerful expression of faith in our institutions.  Calling him, “Convicted Felon Donald Trump,” repeatedly instead of, “Presidential Candidate Donald Trump,” will surely have an effect on the malleable psychology of his followers.  For more about how this works from a psychological and mental health point of view, please consider a paid Substack subscription to access my new book, The Psychology of Trump Contagion: An Existential Threat to American Democracy and All Humankind.