Donald Trump Must Stand Trial for Crimes Against Humanity
The International Criminal Court Must Prosecute Former US President Donald J. Trump for Crimes Against Humanity.
Matthew R. Bishop — February 1st, 2021
*EDIT: A new Lancet article adjusts the 70% avoidable mortality figure down to 40%, using averaged data from G-7 nations, here*
Donald Trump, 45th President of the United States, did everything within his power to destroy democracy, to divide Americans, to install himself as an unelected dictator, and to sabotage both the sovereign national security of the United States and the larger global interests of the liberal-international order as a whole. History will remember him not only as a terrorist, a traitor, and a mortal enemy of the free world, principally responsible for the most horrific terrorist attack against the United States since 9/11. It will also record him as the man who tried to kill democracy once and for all — and almost succeeded. In fact, on January 6th, 2021 — the darkest day for democracy since the end of the Second World War — he came within just 100 feet of accomplishing this sinister goal.
Americans are traumatized by these events, and many of them feel as if there’s nothing we can do. They’re wrong.
There is something we can do to regain the lost ground that Donald Trump stole from democracy. In fact, we can do more than just retake that ground. We can emerge from this crisis having gained more ground for democracy than we ever had before, instead of losing ground.
To do this, we must surrender former US President Donald Trump over to the International Criminal Court so that the 45th President of the United States can stand trial on charges of crimes against humanity.
The symbolism is self-evident: Such a trial will prove to the world that no one — not even the most powerful human being on the planet — is above the rule of law. Absolutely no one. Not even the President of the United States himself, with half of the United States Congress flocking to his defense even after he tried to have them killed.
Emerging out from one of the darkest periods in American history, we now have a decision of world-historical importance to make: We can return to normal, and pretend to hold the highest criminals accountable to some false, half-baked concept of international law. Or we can build a new normal, where we actually do hold them accountable.
The consequences of this decision will impact the trajectory of world history for centuries to come. This is an opportunity to begin a brighter era of world history, if Americans are brave enough to see beyond their current darkness.
Donald Trump, so far, has been winning victory after victory, pushing democracy well beyond its breaking points, advancing fascism, terrorism, and ethnonationalism against the forces of freedom and civil society. He has been so consistently victorious that millions of Americans had already consigned their country to failure or state collapse.
It is time for democracy — and all of civil society throughout the free world — to fight back against this existential threat.
By surrendering a former US President over to the ICC to face charges of crimes against humanity, the message will be broadcast loud and clear around the world: Democracy is back. It is bigger, stronger, smarter and brighter than it ever was before. And it’s here to stay.
There has never been any US President in the Late Modern Era (1945-Present) so deserving of international condemnation and criminal prosecution. Pick any crime, and chances are that Donald Trump is guilty of it, from tax evasion to manslaughter.
And while it is vitally important to have criminal accountability for the attempted autocoup of January 6th, 2021, the reality is that the US response to the COVID-19 pandemic — not Trump’s failed coup — is what killed 420,000 Americans, a number expected to reach 500,000 — or half a million Americans — by the end of February, 2021.
Crimes Against Humanity generally refers to deliberate crimes which have resulted in mass death, wholesale homicide, genocide, or war. This, therefore, is what should be the focus of an international prosecution against Donald Trump on charges of crimes against humanity: The US response to COVID-19.
The case for his prosecution is clear: 99% of all US COVID-19 deaths could have been prevented. If you’re a conservative offended by this fact, use 70% — that’s the absolute lowest credible estimate that exists in any scientific model for how many US mortalities could and should have been avoided from the start of this pandemic.
That means that roughly 400,000 Americans who died in these past 10 months could and should still be alive today. By the end of this month, that figure will become 500,000 — half a million human lives.
To exemplify the gross (deliberate) negligent homicide of America’s COVID-19 response, consider the varying mortalities of our fellow nations around the globe. After adjusting for population size, 79 Americans die for every 1 South Korean from COVID-19. In New Zealand, a nation with five million citizens, only 25 individual people have died from COVID-19 this entire time. In Australia, fewer than 1,000 people have died across the entire continent. And while Americans make up only 4% of the world’s population, the US records an overwhelming 25% of all COVID-19 cases worldwide and is responsible for 19% of all global COVID-19 deaths. Averaged out globally, this means an American is roughly 5x more likely to die of COVID-19 than a randomly selected human anywhere else on the planet.
This is not the result of negligence. It is the result of a deliberate attempt to undermine American human security on the part of the former President of the United States himself. By every legal definition, this is a crime against humanity.
American legal scholars have already slammed the US response to the pandemic — consistently accusing the Trump regime of mass negligent homicide, second-degree murder, premeditated negligent homicide, crimes against humanity (and here), and yes, even genocide — a claim which is academically correct, but legally non-binding due to the UN’s strict limits on the term genocide. In these papers, hundreds of US legal scholars have already laid out their arguments for their respective positions, and have already argued against each other about their precise legal charges, making it simple and straightforward for any international prosecution to begin with more than enough hard evidence, legal analysis, and witness testimony. Crucially, against this overwhelming consensus of criminal charges, Donald Trump and his allies have offered no legal defense or rebuttal against these accusations, except to attack “the liberal media”. In other words, this is a slam-dunk case for any international prosecutor who wants to pick it up.
Donald Trump and his regime are not only guilty of terrorism, treason, sedition and insurrection against the United States federal government. They have done more than just incite domestic terrorists to invade the US Capitol in a violent coup attempt to sabotage the peaceful transfer of government power for the first time in the entire 244-year history of the United States. They have done more than attack democracy itself.
Donald Trump and his regime are also guilty of deliberate and pre-meditated crimes against humanity, directly resulting in the avoidable, preventable deaths of half a million Americans.
This was a deliberate mass crime comparable to the most horrific acts of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Mao. Donald Trump is America’s fascist. His name will go down in history right beside all of the above.
But Americans cannot wait for history to write itself. Or at least, America’s enemies will not wait. Rival powers and dictatorships around the world will present justified arguments against American security interests for decades to come, hastening the collapse of the United States — unless we can disprove those arguments right here, right now.
Trump and his associates must answer for every single American death that he and his regime have caused. We must surrender Donald Trump over to the International Criminal Court for the 45th President of the United States to stand trial on charges of crimes against humanity.
Defeating the British Empire was possible. Defeating the Confederacy was possible. Defeating the Nazis of the Third Reich was possible. Defeating homegrown US fascism is not only possible — it is a necessary prerequisite for the self-preservation of the United States of America itself. US policymakers must consider this to be an immediate national security priority on par with all of the above historical conflicts.
But instead of seeking defensive answers to reclaim only the lost ground of American democracy, policymakers should instead seek answers that open up new fronts and take the offensive to the enemy, advancing global civilization and the international rule of law against the forces of fascism. America does not negotiate with terrorists and fascists. It defeats them.
Matthew R. Bishop is a US federal civilian crisis response officer and an author-journalist specializing in early-stage armed conflict prevention and political communications psychology.