What we need to do to stop Trump from destroying democracy after he stands down from the presidency

This year, Inauguration Day marks the end of a profoundly corrupt presidency. During his one term as commander-in-chief, Donald Trump drove American democracy to the brink of systemic collapse.

The work of preserving and restoring it is more critical than ever. The American people and our elected officials must hold accountable those who threaten our republic, enact ethics and transparency laws to stave off corruption, and pursue structural reforms to reinvigorate the basic promise of government for the people and by the people.

Over the last four years, President Trump has accumulated an astounding 3,700 conflicts of interest by refusing to divest from his private businesses while serving in the nation’s highest public office. Trump’s decision eviscerated any semblance of distinction between his public responsibilities and his private financial interests.

As a result, he abused the presidency to promote his clubs, hotels, and golf courses – not least by visiting them frequently with a small army of secret service agents and occasionally a foreign head of state in tow. All too predictably, members of the president’s administration, members of Congress, corporate lobbyists, foreign actors, special interests and anyone else seeking to curry favor with the president patronized his properties, effectively putting money into Trump’s pocket.

Trump and his associates have engaged in a staggering amount of unethical, and potentially criminal, misconduct. The list includes campaign finance violations and false statements relating to payments Michael Cohen, Trump’s attorney, made to women who claimed they had had affairs with Trump.

It includes several episodes of potential obstruction of justice stemming from Trump’s efforts to impede the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and potential cooperation with his campaign. It includes his efforts to subvert the prosecution of his associate Roger Stone, who helped the Trump campaign plan for and take advantage of the information that Russia hacked and disseminated via Wikileaks.

Then, of course there are the offenses that earned Trump the distinction of being the only American president to be impeached twice. This list includes multiple criminal offenses relating to Trump’s efforts to get Ukraine to investigate his political rival, Joe Biden – acts that prompted President Trump’s first impeachment.

The list also includes President Trump’s pressuring Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to overturn the results of Georgia’s presidential election and inciting a violent attack on the US Congress in an attempt to hinder its final counting of the 2020 election results and confirmation of Joe Biden as the winner.

There is no doubt that President Trump represented a unique threat to American democracy, and we must celebrate his electoral defeat and his failed efforts to undermine the peaceful transfer of power. But even as a former president and potential future office holder, Trump can still harm our nation’s institutions. As we look forward to a new administration, we must take action to incapacitate this dangerous man, repair the norms, laws, and institutions that he exposed as insufficient, and address the decades-long corrosion of our democracy that allowed Trump to come close to breaking it.

The fight to create a path forward for American democracy starts with accountability. The violent riot the president incited on 6 January gave Americans a reminder of the tenuous nature of our still young system of government. That starts with the Senate, which will soon conduct a second impeachment trial of Trump, likely on a single article: inciting insurrection. The Senate should convict the president and issue a sentence that no other body can – by barring President Trump from holding office again.

Many rioters have since been arrested and charged, but we need to ensure that the president and his cronies face full and fair investigations for their misconduct too. Congress and federal and state law enforcement agencies must conduct a thorough review of all decisions made involving politically sensitive cases, to ensure that all responsible parties are held to account.

There must be public findings so that the American people know the extent of the misconduct committed by Trump, his enablers in Congress and his white supremacist allies who stormed the Capitol. Ensuring that there are real consequences for Trump administration officials who committed criminal offenses is not a form of backwards-looking retribution; to the contrary, it is the only way we might hope to deter future behavior by government officials. We know this because after watching his impeachment acquittal in 2020 lead to his attempts to overthrow our election and incite a riot, it’s clear that every time Trump has been given a pass, his abuses have only escalated.

Our zeal for righteous accountability must be matched by a resolve to renew the institutions and legal regimes that make our democracy function as it should.

In December, our organization, the watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, released a comprehensive roadmap to an accountable, inclusive and ethical government, entitled What Democracy Looks Like. We call for strengthening the laws and institutions that exist to hold presidents and their administrations accountable.

We explain how Congress can reassert powers that Trump and his predecessors have usurped. We lay out critical reforms that could reduce the influence of dark (anonymous) money in American politics. And we suggest enhancements to the ethics regimes for the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of America’s government.

These reforms are all crucial, but they may not be enough. That’s why we also have to push for democracy reforms to address the grave legitimacy crisis facing our government including guaranteeing the right of every citizen to vote.

On January 20, we will celebrate our success in defending our democracy from a man who was ready to destroy it. The following day, we will wake up and begin the hard work of securing it for generations to come.

Jennifer Ahearn serves as CREW’s Policy Director. Prior to joining CREW, Jennifer worked in the Office of General Counsel of the United States Sentencing Commission