Starting Monday, Donald Trump will be the first ex-US president to stand trial. In other countries, heads of state have already been indicted.
Washington, DC - When President Gerald Ford pardoned his predecessor in 1974, averting a possible trial of Richard M. Nixon, he did so out of a desire to keep the country quiet. An impeachment of Nixon, Ford said in a public address, would inevitably plunge the nation into bitter, polarized division.
“My concern is for the immediate future of this great country,” Ford said. In the half century that has passed since Ford's pardon, other countries have taken a different path and former presidents or prime ministers in France, Brazil, South Korea, Israel and elsewhere brought to justice for numerous alleged crimes such as embezzlement, corruption, election interference and bribery.
Some cases have illustrated the benefits of attempting to hold the most powerful political officials accountable under the rule of law - but also the daunting challenges of prosecuting such figures. These former leaders can draw on a broad public base to attack the process, maintain their influence, secure their support and, in some cases, reclaim power.
As the first ex-president: Trump has to answer in court in four cases
The United States appears to be crossing the line that Ford dared not cross, as Donald Trump is expected to become the country's first ex-president to stand trial later this month.
Trump's trial in New York, scheduled to begin on April 15, is one of four cases in which he must stand trial. The cases raise broader questions about the durability of the American justice system and the public's trust in democracy, especially as Trump, the likely Republican presidential nominee, heads toward a rematch with President Biden in November.
“The idea that not only would charges be filed, but that a former and possibly future president would be convicted and sent to prison is truly extraordinary,” said William Howell, a professor of American politics at the University of Chicago. “How the system and the American public respond will be very telling about the nature of our democratic commitments.”
Trump has pleaded not guilty in each of his criminal cases. The presidential election is still months away, but polls have shown that Trump's charges have not hurt him politically but have led to a surge in GOP support.
In authoritarian states, political opponents are locked away
Perhaps the most difficult challenge in prosecuting former heads of state around the world, legal experts say, is that it can appear to be overtly political and contribute to many citizens losing trust in the impartiality and fairness of the legal system .
In authoritarian states, opposition figures are routinely jailed on false or questionable charges, and who is prosecuted can depend on who is in power. In Russia, for example, opposition leader Alexei Navalny, one of President Vladimir Putin's harshest critics, was sentenced to a total of three decades in prison and died in a remote penal colony in February. And in China, President Xi Jinping's main political rival, Sun Zhengcai, was sentenced to life in prison for corruption in 2018.
Even in liberal democracies, former heads of state facing investigations and criminal charges have tried to portray these cases as armed, political prosecutions — similar to the rhetoric of Trump and his allies, who routinely rely on such arguments to appeal to investigators and prosecutors to denounce those who scrutinize him.
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who ruled the country from 2007 to 2012, has vehemently maintained his innocence and lambasted prosecutors and judges in cases of corruption and illegal campaign financing.
Sarkozy has so far been convicted in two cases; he was sentenced to six months in prison and remains free on appeal. A third case, which could go to trial next year, is still pending. This case involves allegations that Sarkozy accepted illegal campaign funds from Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi during his 2007 presidential candidacy. Gaddafi was killed in 2011. “Sarkozy's claim that this is a political issue is more or less gospel to the French right,” said Robert Zaretsky, a historian and author at the University of Houston.
Zaretsky stressed that Sarkozy had not gone as far as Trump in attacking a broader “deep state” conspiracy against him by the French government. And while Sarkozy continues to have influence over French conservatives, Trump is at the head of a right-wing extremist movement in the United States.
Brazil's leader forged vaccination certificate
In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro modeled his political rise on Trump's nationalist uprising and came to office in 2019. He is now accused by Brazilian authorities of forging a coronavirus vaccination certificate before entering the United States in late 2022 after losing re-election.
Bolsonaro is also being investigated over allegations that he tried to co-opt the Brazilian police to prevent his successor, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, from taking office. During Lula's inauguration on January 8, 2023, supporters stormed Bolsonaro's federal government building, a scene reminiscent of the attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters on January 6, 2021. In contrast to Trump, Bolsonaro is barred from public office until 2030 following a ruling by the Supreme Electoral Court for making false statements about the 2022 election.
“The fact that [the Electoral Court] took this first step is a really big deal. It happened, and it's over," said Rachel Bill Chavez, president and chief executive of the Inter-American Dialogue, a think tank focused on the Western Hemisphere.
In South Korea there are several cases against heads of state
In some countries, the sight of a former head of state facing trial is more of a familiar sight than a novelty. In South Korea, four former presidents have been imprisoned for corruption since the 1980s. Another ex-president died by suicide in 2009 while he was under investigation. Most recently, former President Park Geun-hye was indicted in 2017 and sentenced to 24 years in prison the following year for bribery and abuse of power.
Although the prosecutions have contributed to political partisanship, South Korea's justice system has survived and in some ways emerged stronger, analysts said.
In late 2021, President Moon pardoned Jae-in Park, and she retreated to a life outside the political spotlight. Moon was replaced in 2022 by South Korea's Attorney General Yoon Suk Yeol, who oversaw the criminal conviction of Park and another former president, Lee Myung-bak, for abuse of power.
“When Park was indicted, there was an off-cycle presidential election. They did everything according to the rules. There was no one who questioned it,” said Victor Cha, an Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “In the last election, the winner's margin was smaller than in the United States, and the losing candidate gave in and accepted the result.
Cha pointed out that South Korean presidents' terms are limited to five years, which protects the country from former heads of state who might try to come back to power to protect themselves from judicial investigations.
Israel's Netanyahu has also been indicted
An indicted head of state recently returned to office at one of America's closest allies - with controversial results. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was indicted in 2019 on charges of fraud, breach of trust and bribery while still in office. His trial was delayed by delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Netanyahu left office in 2021 and railed against a prosecutorial “witch hunt.” He returned to power the following year.
Netanyahu and his conservative allies then attempted to reform the country's judiciary while the prime minister's prosecution was ongoing - a plan that led to violent unrest in Israel. “It got to the point where he tried to manipulate the justice system by using the argument that there was a conspiracy theory against him,” said Victor Menaldo, a political science professor at the University of Washington.
When Ford pardoned Nixon five decades ago, concern for the stability of the United States was paramount. Ford said the act was necessary to avoid "ugly passions" among voters and to allay public doubts about the "credibility of our free institutions of government."
Trump announces “legal revenge”.
Ford's pardon gave the public the impression that prosecuting a former president was "beyond the realm of possibility," said Howell, a professor at the University of Chicago. By the same token, Howell said, what happens in Trump's criminal cases could set a new precedent for the behavior of future presidents - for better or worse.
Trump has already vowed political and legal revenge against his rivals if he wins another term. "Trump said [to his supporters], 'I am your retaliation,'" said Saikrishna Prakash, a law professor at the University of Virginia. "And one of the ways to understand that is, 'I'm going to prosecute all the people who persecuted me.'"
We are currently testing machine translations. This article was automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English on April 11, 2024 at the “Washingtonpost.com” - as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.