What Would Happen If Trump Refused to Leave Office?
The Atlantic
FEBRUARY 22, 2020
“If Donald Trump is defeated in November 2020, his presidency will end on January 20, 2021. If he is reelected, then, barring other circumstances such as removal from office, his administration will terminate on the same day in 2025. In either of these scenarios, Trump would cease to be president immediately upon the expiration of his term. But what if he won’t leave the White House?
The American Constitution spells out how the transfer of power is supposed to work. Article II provides that the president “shall hold his office for the term of four years.” The Twentieth Amendment says that the president’s and vice president’s terms “shall end at noon on the 20th day of January … and the terms of their successors shall then begin.” Of course, a president may be reelected to a second four-year term, but under the Twenty-Second Amendment, “no person shall be elected to the office of president more than twice.”
For nearly 250 years, presidents have respected the law. Even when electoral defeat has been unexpected and ignominious, presidents have passed the baton without acrimony. In a sense, perhaps this is the central achievement of the American system: to have transferred power peacefully from one leader to the next, without heredity to guide the way.
In May, the faith leader Jerry Falwell Jr. tweeted an apparent reference to the completed investigation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller into Russian election interference. “I now support reparations,” he wrote. “Trump should have 2 yrs added to his 1st term as pay back for time stolen by this corrupt failed coup.” Trump retweeted Falwell’s post.
Refusal to leave office is rare, but not unheard of. In the past decade, presidents in democracies such as Moldova, Sri Lanka, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Gambia have refused to leave office, sometimes leading to bloodshed. In 2016, Joseph Kabila decided not to step down after three five-year terms as the president of Congo, announcing that he would delay the election for two years so that a census could be conducted. His decision was met with mass protests in which 50 people were killed by government security forces. Still, he followed through and an election took place in 2018. He left office thereafter.
Elected officials in the U.S. have also refused to step down, albeit from lower offices than the presidency. In 1874, a Texas governor locked himself in the basement of the state capitol building after losing his reelection bid. The saga began when Republican Governor Edmund J. Davis lost the 1873 election by a resounding 2-to-1 ratio to his Democratic challenger, Richard Coke, and claimed that the election had been tainted with fraud and intimidation. A court case made its way to the state’s supreme court. All three justices, each of whom had been appointed by the incumbent Davis, ruled that the election was unconstitutional and invalid. Democrats called upon the public to disregard the court’s decision, and proceeded with plans for Coke’s inauguration. On January 15, 1874, Coke arrived at the state capitol with a sheriff’s posse, and was sworn in to office while Davis barricaded himself downstairs with state troopers. The next day, Davis requested federal troops from President Ulysses S. Grant. Grant refused, and Davis finally stepped down three days later.
In 1946, Georgia endured the “Three Governors Crisis,” when the governor-elect died before taking office. Three men—the outgoing governor, the son of the governor-elect and the lieutenant governor-elect—each claimed a right to the office. The state assembly voted for the governor-elect’s son to take charge, but the outgoing governor refused to leave, so both men physically occupied the governor’s office. The outgoing governor yielded when the governor-elect’s son had the locks changed. The state supreme court finally decided in favor of the lieutenant governor-elect three months later.
The closest thing to a refusal to leave office that the U.S. presidency has experienced was Franklin D. Roosevelt’s break with tradition by seeking a third term. Roosevelt rejected the norm set by George Washington, and followed by successive presidents, to step down after two terms. FDR was elected to a third and even a fourth term, but concern about a permanent executive led to the ratification of the Twenty-Second Amendment in 1951, limiting presidents to two terms.
If Trump were inclined to overstay his term, the levers of power work in favor of removal. Because the president immediately and automatically loses his constitutional authority upon expiration of his term or after removal through impeachment, he would lack the power to direct the U.S. Secret Service or other federal agents to protect him. He would likewise lose his power, as the commander in chief of the armed forces, to order a military response to defend him. In fact, the newly minted president would possess those presidential powers. If necessary, the successor could direct federal agents to forcibly remove Trump from the White House. Now a private citizen, Trump would no longer be immune from criminal prosecution, and could be arrested and charged with trespassing in the White House. While even former presidents enjoy Secret Service protection, agents presumably would not follow an illegal order to protect one from removal from office.
Although Trump’s remaining in office seems unlikely, a more frightening—and plausible—scenario would be if his defeat inspired extremist supporters to engage in violence. One could imagine a world in which Trump is defeated in the 2020 election, and he immediately begins tweeting that the election was rigged. Or consider the possibility, albeit remote, that a second-term Trump is removed from office through impeachment, and rails about his ouster as a coup. His message would be amplified by right-wing media. If his grievances hit home with even a few people inclined toward violence, deadly acts of violence, or even terrorist attacks against the new administration, could result.
Ultimately, the key to the peaceful transfer of power is the conduct of the outgoing leader himself. America has thus far been lucky in that regard. After voluntarily relinquishing the presidency after his second term, Washington took measures to demonstrate the peaceful transfer of power. He attended the inauguration of his successor, John Adams, and insisted on walking behind Adams after the ceremony to display his subservience to the new president. Through this example, the citizenry was able to accept that the power of the presidency now resided in its new occupant.
More recently, upon leaving office after a heated campaign, George H. W. Bush left behind a letter to welcome Bill Clinton into the White House on January 20, 1993. It concluded, “You will be our president when you read this note. I wish you well. I wish your family well. Your success now is our country’s success. I am rooting hard for you. Good luck.” Imagining such a gracious note from the current occupant of the White House to his successor is difficult.
But if Trump should fail in his final duty as president to transfer power peacefully, the nation’s laws, norms, and institutions will be responsible for carrying out the will of the electorate. Should those fail too, then the American experiment’s greatest achievement will come to a grinding halt, and with it the hope that a republic can ever be kept.
BARBARA MCQUADE is a professor at the University of Michigan Law School. She was the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan and co-chair of the Attorney General’s Subcommittee on Terrorism and National Security in the Obama administration.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/what-if-he-wont-go/606259/
08/16/2020 @ 3:01 pm
I think he will stall to ramp-up armed, dangerous supporters, who in turn will put their lives at risk in what ultimately will be a failed attempt to prevent the entry of U.S. Marshalls and the military to enter the White House. People will lose their lives in that attempt.
Within hours the U.S. Marshalls and the military will reach him in the deepest bunkers underneath and he will be given one chance to respond peaceably so that his hair does not get mussed.
Should he then refuse that opportunity he will find out as the failed “Law & Order” candidate, what the phrase “cuffed and stuffed” means.
He will not be harmed nor will anyone kneel on his neck while he calls out to his deceased mother.
It will be far more civil than he deserves.
08/16/2020 @ 3:15 pm
@AWS;
If Trump and Barr are stupid enough to cause an armed confrontation at the White House, that incident alone may cause a permanent demise in American Democracy as we know it…
It may take another 200 years to recover from it and ‘ return to normal’ whatever that may mean a couple of centuries from now…
Keep in mind that this country has not yet fully recovered from the Civil War….
08/17/2020 @ 10:17 am
I think that Trump fears prosecution if he leaves office, no longer having the power and legal immunity he needs in order to survive, much like Putin. He cut so many corners, double-crossed so many people, broke so many laws, that’s it’s akin to the old Punjabi tale of the man who bamboozled a Tiger for a ride, but now has no way to get off that tiger, for fear of being eaten.
Personally, however it happens, when Trump is forced to leave office I have no doubt that he will seek asylum in Russia. I think he and his handlers are too smart to risk an actual armed confrontation at the White House, as there’s no viable end-game here. Just immediate incarceration for willfully ignoring an election and interfering with its results.
I think it’s very likely that if Biden wins the election, Trump will take a diplomatic trip to Russia two or three weeks prior to inauguration. He will not show up to the inauguration. Once Biden is inaugurated, Trump will formally request political asylum in Russia (like Snowden did). There will be issues about what to do with the nuclear football and secret service staff once there. Russia, not wishing for an uncontrollable mess, will probably have these folks report to the Embassy in Moscow.
Prior to his election, Trump often played with the idea of running his own political talk show. Sort of a cross between the Apprentice, Sean Hannity, and Art Bell (lol). He planned on using it as a platform from which to make more money, re-brand himself, and become the next Rush Limbaugh. The run for President, in ways, had 2 goals. One was to pave the way for this TV show, should the election not go anywhere.
Russia Today has similar style talk shows, and I think it would be a mastermind move by Putin to have Trump host such a TV show from Moscow, where he could engage in all sorts of political demagoguery and undermine political legitimacy and stability in the United States. He could use the platform to do the following:
a. Perpetuate the myth that he is the Rightful and Lawful President of the United States, and that he was deposed via illegality by a “Pretender” to the Oval Office. Think of the Catholic Charles Edward Stuart—the “Bonnie Prince Charlie,” grandson of deposed king Charles II, last Catholic monarch of Britain who was deposed by the Glorious Revolution of William of Orange. Stuart used his position from abroad to fund and incite political and religious insurgents and subversives in Britain, with the hope of inciting an all-out rebellion that would allow him to assume the throne.
Trump would have ZERO ability to launch a politically successful uprising from abroad, but that’s not the point. Putin wins by destabilizing the United States, because it distracts us from interfering–in an organized and cohesive way—against Russian geopolitical actions abroad (also the sweetness of pure revenge).
b. Endorse Right-Wing candidates from Abroad and bring them into the Putin-funded global right-wing-nationalist resurgence (Russia is doing the same thing they did under Communism, in terms of promoting global instability and increasing their sphere of influence, but they are doing it with Nationalists, rather than Socialists).
c. Empower actual violent right-wing insurgents and would-be revolutionaries in the US.
d. Help foster greater ties and cooperation between the Kremlin and wealthy GOP families and institutions in the United States. I can easily imagine Blackwater, Betsy DeVoss and others like them cozying up to Putin to help them with future elections, and increased efforts to destabilize the United States (so they can regain power).
This is the smart move for Trump, and one that I would not be surprised if he took. He could re-incorporate his businesses in Russia, and basically become a transplanted American oligarch.
Never underestimate the diplomatic and propaganda gold of hosing a Deposed Monarch in your country, especially when it’s the former leader of your primary geopolitical opponent. You could gain all sorts of leverage and chips and tools by harboring such a person and giving them a platform.
I have no proof that this will happen. But based on history, and the cards Trump is currently holding, and the long-term game of those he works with, I think this is what game theorists would call his “Dominant Strategy,” or “Pareto-Optimal” outcome.