President Trump will leave the White House on 20 January, but the decisions he is still making will have consequences even after Biden's inauguration.
Like much of his term, the final weeks of Donald Trump's presidency have been marked by controversial and rushed decisions that caught even his closest aides off guard. Since 7 November, after losing the election, Trump entered a vicious cycle defined by conspiracy theories and denialism. Under the guidance of Rudy Giuliani, his legal team filed more than fifty lawsuits in an attempt to prove that voting operations had been rigged, manipulated by hostile forces and, in general, invalid. At present, the vast majority of the legal cases have been dismissed by the relevant courts, and even those that were admitted have not changed the outcome of the vote.
In the meantime, Trump continued to exercise his powers to the full, pardoning several friends and acquaintances and risking the expiry of unemployment benefits for millions of Americans. The final weeks of his presidency, overshadowed by the nightmare of the Covid-19 pandemic, which continues to record hundreds of thousands of cases a day, have been marked by events that will have consequences well beyond the change of administration. Let us go through them in order.
The first major issue to define the final weeks of the Trump presidency was the debate surrounding the Pandemic relief bill, a $900 billion (over €700 billion) aid package containing a host of measures, from funding for schools and small businesses to allocations for the functioning of government, up to $35 billion earmarked to tackle climate change.
The most pressing issue, which ignited public debate, was unemployment benefits. Under the Cares act passed last March, around 12 million unemployed Americans received a form of financial support from the government during the pandemic. These benefits were set to expire on 26 December, and the US Congress therefore set to work preparing a second measure capable of continuing to provide assistance to citizens in difficulty.
By an overwhelming majority, Congress passed a substantial aid package on 22 December. Trump's signature was considered almost a foregone conclusion, given that his own Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, had been one of the plan's principal backers. The package provides a one-off lump-sum payment of $600 (almost €500) for (nearly) all American citizens, employed or not, and a federal supplement of $300 a week for the unemployed, to be added to the assistance already received through state measures.
In a Twitter video, however, the president opposed the measure, arguing that the $600 cheques would not be enough and proposing to triple them, raising the amount to $2,000 per person (around €1,600). While the Democrats immediately welcomed the proposal, declaring themselves ready to renegotiate everything, Republicans rejected it, arguing that the operation would be too costly.
The legislative impasse continued for several days, bringing uncertainty and anxiety to millions of Americans. Only on the evening of 27 December did Trump decide to sign the aid package without demanding any changes, restarting the procedures for benefits (with lump-sum cheques of $600, not $2,000) and also activating funds for a range of issues not directly connected to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Among other things, the Pandemic relief bill also includes an allocation of $35 billion (€28 billion) for measures aimed at tackling climate change: this is the "highest ever" investment, according to the newspaper Intelligencer. The sum will be spent over the next five years to strengthen the renewable energy sector, from wind to solar panels, and will make it possible to avoid the emission of 949 million tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2035.
One of the key processes activated by the Pandemic relief bill is the launch of a plan to phase out the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a gas widely used today in cooling systems that nevertheless contributes to the greenhouse effect, trapping heat at a rate one thousand times greater than carbon dioxide. The Obama administration had already attempted to reduce HFC use, but the arrival of Trump then cancelled the existing projects and agreements. The new law brings the United States closer to the standards of the Kigali Agreement, an international plan that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and eliminate the use of hydrofluorocarbons, launched in 2016 and entering into force in 2019, but which the US has never signed. Today HFCs are used in refrigeration appliances such as fridges and air conditioners, but more advanced and sustainable solutions exist, such as natural refrigerants and hydrofluoroolefin (HFO).
Considering the initiatives in favour of fossil fuels and the generally denialist stance adopted by Trump towards the climate emergency, the approval of a package containing $35 billion earmarked exclusively for environmental initiatives during his very presidency is certainly surprising. Many argue that the fact that the figure was inserted into a far broader plan encompassing measures of the utmost urgency — the Pandemic relief bill itself — helped the programme to be passed swiftly: "If Joe Biden had proposed the exact same measures two months from now, conservative media would have cried 'Green new deal'," writes Intelligencer.
Donald Trump has also taken advantage of his final weeks at the White House to pardon friends, family members or people close to the military establishment. Under the American Constitution, the president has the power to grant pardons for federal offences (but not state ones), thereby nullifying their legal consequences. Although the president can choose to pardon more or less anyone, candidates are generally reviewed in advance by the Department of Justice, which then issues a non-binding opinion on whether or not to grant the pardon. Non-binding, as noted: Trump, or any other occupant of the White House, is therefore not required to follow the advice received.
Traditionally, in the final weeks of their term presidents tend to exercise this power with greater frequency, and in the past there have been several well-known cases of pardons considered improper or that, in any event, caused some scandal. On 20 January 2001, for example, on his last day in office Bill Clinton pardoned more than a hundred people. Among them were his brother Roger Clinton, charged with drug trafficking, and Marc Rich, a wealthy magnate who had fled to Switzerland after being charged with tax evasion and illegal oil dealings with Iran. On the other hand, Rich had also made large donations to the Democratic Party and to Bill and Hillary Clinton's campaigns and foundations. Now, ten years on, Donald Trump has not missed the opportunity to pardon his own close circle of associates and acquaintances.
Among those pardoned in recent weeks are several key figures in the Russiagate scandal, the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller aimed at clarifying the dynamics of Russian involvement in the 2016 elections. First among them is George Papadopoulos, the Trump adviser who inadvertently set off the chain of investigations at a wine bar in Kensington, London, by revealing to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer part of the intrigues between Washington and the Kremlin. Papadopoulos was subsequently convicted of lying to the FBI, and spent twelve days in a Wisconsin prison.
Remaining within the Russiagate sphere, Trump pardoned Paul Manafort, the manager of his election campaign. Manafort, currently under house arrest, is serving a sentence of more than seven years in prison for his murky ties to Ukraine and his involvement in the investigation led by Mueller. Michael Flynn also benefited from a presidential pardon — Trump's first National Security Adviser, who pleaded guilty to repeatedly lying to the FBI, again in the context of Russiagate.
Particular controversy was also sparked by the pardons granted to four soldiers, recruited by the private company Blackwater, who in 2007 had opened fire and killed 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians in what is remembered as the Nisour Square tragedy. One of them, Nicholas Slatten, had been sentenced to life imprisonment. In the statement released by the White House to formalise the pardons, the decision to pardon the soldiers is described as "broadly supported by the public," while the deaths of the citizens are referred to as "unfortunate."
Finally, looking at the innermost circle of his personal acquaintances, Trump pardoned Charles Kushner, a New Jersey real estate developer and father of Jared Kushner, husband of Ivanka Trump. In the past, Charles Kushner had been charged with several tax evasion offences, but the most bizarre story concerns his attempt to bribe a witness: when Kushner discovered that his sister's husband was cooperating with prosecutors to incriminate him, he hired a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, filmed the scene and then threatened to leak everything to the press.
Although, as noted, the president has the power to decide independently to whom to grant pardons — and many, not only Trump, have taken advantage of this possibility — the decisions taken in recent weeks have caused debate, particularly since the tycoon does not appear to be inclined to follow any formal procedure or to consider requests from outside his circle of acquaintances, preferring instead to pardon people he knows well or who are otherwise close to the White House's circles of power. At present, 14,000 people have submitted formal clemency requests across the United States, many of whom have received no media coverage or have committed minor offences.
Meanwhile, from the 3 November vote until the end of its term, the Trump administration has plans to carry out a total of six executions. It is the first time in 130 years that one
