Issue of victory for Trump is a matter of life and death: Analyst

The President has survived one impeachment, twenty-six accusations of sexual misconduct, and an estimated four thousand lawsuits. That run of good luck may well end, perhaps brutally, if Joe Biden wins.

On Election Day, the margin of victory may be crucial in determining Trump’s future. If the winner’s advantage in the Electoral College is decisive, neither side will be able to easily dispute the result. But several of Trump’s former associates say that if there is any doubt at all—no matter how questionable—the President will insist that he has won. 

Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney, says, “He will not concede. Never, ever, ever.” He went on, “I believe he’s going to challenge the validity of the vote in each and every state he loses—claiming ballot fraud, seeking to undermine the process and invalidate it.” Cohen thinks that the recent rush to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court was motivated in part by Trump’s hope that a majority of Justices would take his side in a disputed election.

Norman Ornstein, a political scientist at the American Enterprise Institute, in Washington, D.C., and an outspoken Trump critic, said, “The odds are 99.9999 per cent that New York State authorities have him on all kinds of tax fraud. We know these aren’t crimes that end up just with fines.” Martin Flaherty, a founding director of the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice, at Fordham University, and an expert in transitional justice, agreed: “I have to believe Trump has committed enough ordinary crimes that you could get him.”
 

There are obvious political risks, though. Anne Milgram, a former attorney general of New Jersey and a former Justice Department lawyer, suggested that Biden, should he win, is likely to steer clear of any actions that would undermine trust in the impartiality of the justice system, or re-galvanize Trump’s base.  

Barbara Res, the former Trump Organization employee, and a number of other former Trump associates believe that, if the President is defeated, he will again try to launch some sort of media venture.

Lawrence Douglas, a professor of law at Amherst College and the author of a recent book on the President, “Will He Go?,” predicted that Trump—whether inside the White House or out—will “continue to be a source of chaos and division in the nation.”