Trump’s future: Will history be a guide?

I recently finished listening to a new podcast, “Ultra,” presented by Rachel Maddow. I recommend it. It’s a history lesson focusing on pro-Nazi sentiment that extended into the halls of Congress both preceding and even into World War II. It’s a history that was new to me.

A subplot in the series details the saga of Bill Langer. Langer had been a Governor of North Dakota, and while in that office he was charged and found guilty of defrauding the US government using a scheme to extract kickbacks from government employees. Langer refused to accept the legitimacy of the verdict to the point of orchestrating an armed insurrection to try to maintain his position. In the end, he was forced out of his office as governor; but he was subsequently voted in as one of North Dakota’s US senators.

In that position, his pro-Nazi sympathies became evident as he championed 24 US congressman aligned with the America First movement who had been charged in federal court in the largest sedition case to date in US history. All had been accused of being Nazi collaborators who endorsed right-wing extremist groups that committed violent, destructive acts resulting in loss of life and property and advocated overthrowing the US government. At the time, those on trial and their supporters claimed that the trial was politically motivated and that the Justice Department had been coopted by antagonistic journalists at the Washington Post who were intent on defaming President Roosevelt’s adversaries. It was all a political witch hunt. Sound familiar?

The trial ended in a mistrial seven months into it, only because the presiding judge unexpectedly dropped dead. The Justice Department had the option to retry, but under pressure by some of the same congressmen implicated in the trial, the Department elected not to proceed. Still, one Justice Department prosecutor, John Rogge, was authorized to continue with a further investigation in which he uncovered new evidence directly linking meetings and financial connections between several of the previously accused congressmen and high-ranking Nazi officials.

The report that Rogge prepared and submitted to his superiors in the Justice Department was deemed to be too politically charged; and at President Harry Truman’s direction, the report was kept under wraps, with the obvious intent of sweeping the seditious attempts by these well-placed elected officials under the rug. Not content with that decision, Rogge took it upon himself to publicize his findings, which resulted in his firing from the Justice Department. Though he spoke publicly about his findings at the time, it wasn’t until 1961 that he published his discoveries in a book on the subject, written as a private citizen.

The parallels between then and now are pretty transparent, which may be somewhat disheartening. Learning about this history makes me wonder… What if things went differently back then? What if Bill Lawler had been incarcerated and sent away for a long, long time for his efforts to defy the courts and foment an armed insurrection? What if our history books had highlighted that episode in the story of America, validating the principle of no man being above the law? Perhaps if that history had been indelibly incorporated into our common curricula, the seeds of the Trump’s false claims about the election being stolen wouldn’t have had the sway that they had. Perhaps that history would have served as a deterrent that was so sorely lacking this time around.

The recent guilty verdict in the trial of Oath Keeper Stewart Rhodes represents a positive development in the Justice Department’s commitment to protecting our democracy from the threat of seditionists. This verdict likely will have a deterring effect, but the job won’t be complete until Trump’s involvement in the conspiracy — by both action and inaction — is more fully vetted in a court of law. Who knows what’s going to happen with that effort? Given the various felony charges that could reasonably come about, it’s quite possible that at least one guilty verdict could arise. Still, Trump and his enablers have shown a remarkable capacity to delay and deflect the wheels of justice — the same tactic used by the defense in the 1944 trial. Given the success of this approach so far, it wouldn’t surprise me if Trump ends up dead and buried long before any retribution is ever realized.

As far as Trump’s future is concerned, I’m preparing myself for a reprise of the outcome in 1944, when the accused seditionists evaded jail time; and if history is repeated, like the accused seditionists of old, Trump’s efforts to reclaim power through the ballot box will fail. The difference between then and now, however, is that back then, those who sought re-election and were turned out ended up fading into the far reaches of our nation’s memory bank. I suppose, the celebrity of Trump’s two impeachments will likely save him from being entirely forgotten, but at the pace that the process of justice appears to be playing out in connection with Donald Trump, the moniker “loser,” may very well end up being the extent of any punishment that he suffers, giving lie to the idea that no man is above the law.