Accountability for Corruption and Insurrection

The sheer breadth and depth of the betrayal to the United States that Trump has directed and unleashed is unforgivable. It is the type of injury that calls for a response which the gears of justice seem incapable of delivering. Even among high-minded liberals, it may summon ugly feelings, frankly incompatible with our deepest values. Tragically, nothing will make this right. When faced with an irreparable injury, the best we can do is ensure the injustice is remembered as a mistake.

Whether a huge/monumental mistake or merely a serious/grave mistake is less important than it being a mistake at all. We cannot afford for future public servants to see the path taken by Trump and his most involved enablers and view that as a path they would be eager to follow. 

Frankly, Trump and his administration are clowns. While causing a permanent stain on our history and costing us many irreplaceable opportunities, the greatest threat to our liberty may be ahead. If deception and force for political power and wealth can have a happy ending, then that avenue will attract more capable monsters in the future.

The natural channel for righteous anger in our liberal democracy is Congress. The framers of the Constitution knew this very well; they restrained Congress by prohibiting that “no bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed”^[1]. This means Congress, generally, will not be able to write new laws to hold the Trump administration to account retroactively.

However, Congress does have tremendous powers of investigation and also, critically, can enact existing constitutional provisions where breaches of the Constitution were previously unenforced.

Righteous congressional investigations, an aggressive but faithful DOJ

Any chamber of Congress that the Republicans lose in 2026 must immediately begin an aggressive campaign of investigations into the multitude of crimes committed by Trump and his administration. While they are likely to be stymied by the White House stonewalling and ignoring their subpoenas, the work can begin.

When our next presidential nominee runs, they can state their belief that significant criminality was allowed to fester during the Trump administration. They must commit to supporting their Department of Justice to aggressively pursue cases where there is evidence of crimes that were allowed to go unpunished, whether it leads to a Republican or a Democrat. When they come into office, the Department of Justice must aid Congress in punishing contempt of Congress and not shy away from criminality brought to light through Congressional investigation.

How narrow or broad Congressional investigations go — from only targeting Trump and his most corrupt inner circle or the entire network of enablers of the Trump administration — we can leave for a future date. How tailored or expansive the investigations are, from narrowly focusing on crimes directly associated with the greatest public injury to any crimes of the individuals that have betrayed our nation, we can leave to a future date. However, without violating constitutional rights, the full weight of the public's anger, funneled through the power of Congress and a supportive DOJ, can be a significant punishment we must leverage.

The Execution of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment

When the Supreme Court in Trump v. Anderson^[2] ruled that Congress needed to create a process to enforce the ban on prior office holders who engaged in or provided aid or comfort to insurrection from holding future office, they created a question that a Democratic Congress must answer. Shortly after the insurrection of January 6th, in fact, congressman Steve Cohen tried to do just that, proposing a law to create a process to adjudicate Section 3 of the 14th Amendment^[3].

The language of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment is incredibly expansive, leaving wide room for interpretation. In the aftermath of a stream of Trump nominees unwilling to declare that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and the pardoning of the insurrectionists themselves that participated on January 6th, the very least we can do is ensure that the final public act relating to the January 6th insurrection is a clear acknowledgement, sealed into law, in defiance of the soiling of democracy we have witnessed.

Although that is the very least that can result, there is room for this mechanism to do much more if a coalition can be formed to act on it. At the most extreme, merely cooperating with the Big Lie at the heart of the insurrection could be determined to be providing aid to the January 6th insurrection and could result in a significant share of Republicans who participated in the betrayal of our nation to be ineligible for office. Although finding the coalition to enact such an extreme measure is a remote possibility, this demonstrates the flexibility this mechanism possesses to hold traitors to our democracy accountable.

The Enactment of the Emoluments Clause

While the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution has largely been self-enforced historically, Trump has been willfully ignoring it since his first presidency. In his second term, the scope has been awesome to behold^[4].

In addition to whatever criminal, corrupt activity we can prove for the Trump administration and his associates, the Emoluments Clause provides a route of enforcement that has a much lower threshold. We do not want our government in the business of receiving payment from foreign governments or of being enriched by our own government. That is baked into the foreign^[5]and domestic emoluments clauses^[6] in the Constitution, and does not require corrupt intent, proof of an economic benefit, or anything else but that a relevant emolument exists.

A president and his administration must not receive anything of value at all in a way proscribed by the Constitution, and Congress must establish the mechanism for this constitutional requirement to be enforced. Examples can be found in an analysis done by the Brennan Center for Justice^[7].

Similar to the implementation of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, all liberals can agree that the very least we can do in the aftermath of the monstrous self-enrichment and public corruption we have seen is to give new life to the Emoluments Clause going forward so that this kind of corruption cannot happen in the future with so little recourse.

However, this is not all that could be possible. The Constitution is law, whether enforced or not, and any wealth accumulated in violation of the Emoluments Clause is forfeit. If a coalition can be formed to act upon it, this mechanism could provide a substantial avenue to claw back much of the self-enrichment of the Trump administration, above and beyond whatever violation of existing legal statutes we can identify.

Conclusion

While liberals may be divided now on how to balance accountability against the perception of vengefulness that is not in the public interest and could cause harmful backlash, all liberals should be willing to accept that these three mechanisms of accountability are appropriate to act on.

At minimum, we can strike a symbolic victory of having the final official acts relating to the legacy of the Trump administration to be clear repudiation. However, if a liberal coalition can be formed to do it, then the Trump administration must not be allowed to have benefited from his public conduct.