America’s Most Dangerous Felon: How Donald Trump’s Path of Deceit and Destruction Is Destroying Democracy
Donald Trump is a criminal. This is not hyperbole or partisan insult, it’s a matter of legal fact. For the first time in U.S. history, a former president has felony convictions on his record.
Trump has been found guilty by a jury of 34 felonies, lied to cover up hush-money payments, and now stands as a convicted felon. He has been held civilly liable for sexual assault and defamation, owing over $83 million to writer E. Jean Carroll for defaming her after he sexually abused her. An appellate court referred to his conduct as “rape.”
His famed business empire? Ruled a fraud. A New York judge ordered Trump to pay $355 million for years of rampant business fraud that propped up his wealth on lies. And beyond the courtrooms, Trump’s personal life and political actions reveal a man who betrays trust at every turn, cheating on his wives, inciting a deadly riot against our government, and even giving pardons to the rioters who brutalized police in his name.
This is the real Donald Trump: a twice-impeached, now convicted felon with a rap sheet and a pattern of deceit and destruction that should make any patriot’s blood boil.
Criminal Convictions: The First Felon Ex-President
Trump’s legal reckoning is unprecedented. In 2024, a New York jury unanimously convicted Donald Trump on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, a historic first in America. The case laid bare how Trump tried to illegally influence the 2016 election by paying hush money to an adult film actress and then covering it up in his company’s books. Jurors heard the evidence and found Trump guilty on all counts.
Let that sink in: the current President of the United States is a convicted felon. This isn’t a witch hunt or a “deep state” conspiracy, as Trump squawks whenever he’s caught. It’s twelve ordinary citizens, chosen from the community, examining evidence and concluding beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump committed serious crimes.
These felony convictions demolish any illusion that Trump is merely a victim of political attacks. The man broke the law—repeatedly—and got caught. Even before Trump himself was found guilty, the company bearing his name had already been convicted on multiple counts of tax fraud in 2022. Trump’s longtime CFO went to jail for that scheme.
Now Trump’s own criminal trial has confirmed his personal culpability. The stain of felonious conduct marks Trump permanently, and it’s a stain of his own making. No former president has ever disgraced the office in this way. Trump’s criminal record is a flashing red warning light for our country: we are dealing with someone who has no respect for the law unless he’s twisting it to protect himself.
Liable for Sexual Abuse and Defamation
As if criminal convictions weren’t enough, Trump has also been found civilly liable as a sexual predator and defamer. In a pair of brutal courtroom defeats, juries sided with E. Jean Carroll, who testified that Trump sexual assaulted her in a department store dressing room in the 1990s. Trump mocked and maligned Carroll, calling her a liar and “not my type,” but a jury saw through his lies.
In 2023, that jury awarded Carroll $5 million, finding Trump liable for sexually abusing her and defaming her character. The verdict was upheld on appeal and the appellate court referred to Trump’s conduct as “rape.”
Trump, characteristically, couldn’t keep his mouth shut even after that verdict, he continued to smear Carroll, doubling down on the very lies the jury had just punished him for. So Carroll sued him again for those post-verdict slanders, and in 2024 another jury ordered Trump to pay a staggering $83.3 million in damages.
Think about that: an American jury concluded that the president’s words were so maliciously false and damaging that he owes his victim over eighty million dollars. That verdict is a thunderous declaration that Trump sexually assaulted Carroll and lied about it, destroying her reputation to save his own skin. No amount of bluster on Truth Social can undo the fact that in the eyes of the law, Donald Trump is a sexual abuser who defamed an innocent woman to cover up his misdeeds.
Carroll’s case is just one example, more than 20 other women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct over the years. He infamously bragged about grabbing women without consent. The Carroll verdict finally held him accountable in a court of law, branding him not only a liar but a man who preyed on a woman and then tried to trash her to the world. It is a damning insight into Trump’s character: he will hurt others and smear victims without a shred of remorse.
Massive Business Fraud Exposed
Trump loves to portray himself as a business genius, but the courts have revealed him as a brazen fraud. In a New York civil fraud trial, the evidence showed that Trump built much of his wealth on a house of lies.
For years, he wildly inflated the value of his properties by hundreds of millions of dollars to banks and insurers, lying about everything from the size of his penthouse to the worth of his golf clubs, to secure loans and deals on better terms. This wasn’t sharp business; it was straightforward cheating. And he got caught. In late 2023, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron delivered a scathing verdict: Trump committed “staggering” business fraud.
The judge didn’t mince words about Trump’s utter lack of integrity. He found Trump and his company liable for fraud, canceled the business licenses of key Trump Organization entities in New York, and imposed severe penalties. In early 2024, the judge ordered Trump, his companies, and associates to pay around $355 million in fines and restitution for this decade-long scheme of lies. Engoron noted Trump’s “complete lack of contrition” and “pathological” refusal to admit any wrongdoing, even when caught.
The message was clear: Donald Trump is a fraudster, and no amount of money or power puts him above the law. This is the man who asks Americans to trust him with the economy and the nation’s highest office, a man proven to have duped banks, stiffed business partners, and falsified documents to puff up his ego and fortune. His business record isn’t just a string of bankruptcies and broken promises; it’s now officially a record of fraud. If he lied to enrich himself in business, why on earth would anyone expect honesty from him in public office?
Serial Infidelity and Broken Vows
Trump’s betrayals aren’t confined to courtrooms or boardrooms, they extend into his personal life, where honesty and loyalty are foreign concepts to him. This is a man who has made serial infidelity part of his brand.
He cheated on his first wife, Ivana, with Marla Maples, and got Maples pregnant, igniting a tabloid firestorm in the early 1990s. He then cheated on his second wife, Marla, with Melania Knauss (his future third wife and now the First Lady). And once Melania married him, Trump didn’t suddenly discover fidelity or decency, far from it.
While Melania was pregnant, Trump cheated on her with a Playboy model Karen McDougal. Four months after their son, Barron, was born, he cheated again with porn star, Stormy Daniels. To try and cover up the affairs, he the President of the United States paid hush money to McDougal and Daniels to keep those affairs secret. That’s the kind of man Donald Trump is.
Why bring up Trump’s cheating in a discussion of his public character? Because it lays bare a consistent pattern of behavior: betrayal, deception, and a total lack of honor. If a man cannot even stay faithful to the wife who just bore him a child, if he can shamelessly lie to and humiliate those closest to him, how can we expect him to honor an oath of office or a duty to the public?
Trump treats commitments and promises as expendable. His marital vows meant nothing; neither does his oath to uphold the Constitution. Trump’s personal history of infidelity underscores a core truth about him, he will always put his own gratification above any promise or principle. Character counts, and Trump’s character is a toxic mix of selfishness, deceit, and disloyalty. American voters have every right to question how a serial betrayer in private life could ever be trusted in public life.
Inciting an Insurrection: Attack on American Democracy
On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump proved just how dangerous a man without scruples can be to our nation. That day, the world watched in shock as a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol in a violent attempt to overturn a free and fair election. It was Trump who lit the match.
For weeks after losing the 2020 election, he lied relentlessly to his supporters, falsely claiming that victory was stolen from him. He personally summoned a crowd to Washington for the day Congress met to certify the election results, telling them it would be “wild.” At a rally that morning, Trump whipped his followers into a frenzy with talk of fighting like hell. He pointed them at the Capitol, at our lawmakers and our democratic process, and unleashed them.
What followed was the worst assault on the U.S. Capitol since the War of 1812. Trump’s mob smashed their way in, beat police officers (some rioters used flagpoles and fire extinguishers as weapons), and chanted about hanging the Vice President. Members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, ran for their lives.
American blood was shed; people died because of Trump’s lies and incitement. And where was Donald Trump? Comfortably watching the chaos on TV, reportedly delighted that his supporters were “fighting” for him. For 187 horrifying minutes, he refused to call off the attackers. When he finally told them to go home, he added a deplorable reassurance: “We love you. You’re very special.”
Trump betrayed the Constitution that day in the most direct way imaginable. As Commander-in-Chief, his duty was to protect the country and uphold the peaceful transfer of power. Instead, he sicced a mob on the legislative branch to cling to power.
This was no spur-of-the-moment slip; it was the culmination of a deliberate campaign to nullify millions of Americans’ votes. He tried everything, pressuring election officials, bullying his own Vice President, flooding the courts with frivolous lawsuits, and when all else failed, he incited a riot.
Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 were so beyond the pale that he was impeached for inciting insurrection (making him the only president ever impeached twice). Even Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who shamefully voted to acquit on a technicality, later admitted Trump was “practically and morally responsible” for the violence.
The Jan. 6 insurrection did indelible damage to America’s global reputation as a beacon of democracy. Countries that used to look up to us saw the president of the United States foment a mob against his own government, and they saw democracy literally under attack from within. Our allies were horrified; our enemies gloating. This is the legacy of Donald Trump: he left the Capitol ransacked and American democracy in peril.
Abusing the Pardon Power: Rewarding Violence and Loyalty
In Trump’s world, the only sin is disloyalty to him, actual crimes, even deadly ones, are easily forgiven if they serve his interests. Nothing illustrates this moral rot better than how Trump has used his presidential pardon power.
During his first term as president, Trump repeatedly handed out pardons like candy to people who committed horrific crimes but happened to be his cronies or align with his agenda. He pardoned a notorious Arizona sheriff who terrorized Latino communities and defied court orders (Joe Arpaio). He pardoned soldiers and contractors who were convicted war criminals, men who murdered unarmed civilians and even children.
In December 2020, Trump granted full pardons to four former Blackwater contractors, Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, and Dustin Heard, who were convicted for their roles in the 2007 Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad. This incident resulted in the deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians, including a 9-year-old boy named Ali Kinani, and injuries to 20 others.
The case was tried in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and prosecuted under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA), which allows for the prosecution of U.S. contractors for crimes committed overseas. The contractors were found guilty of various charges, including first-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter. The pardons were met with widespread condemnation from military leaders, legal experts, and international human rights organizations, who argued that the decision undermined the rule of law and accountability for war crimes.
But perhaps the most chilling of Trump’s pardon abuses involves the very insurrection he incited. After January 6, once out of office, Trump dangled the promise of pardons for the rioters if he ever returned to power. In speeches and interviews, he praised the January 6 attackers as patriots and said he would “absolutely” pardon them.
Once reelected, Trump issued a sweeping clemency order that granted pardons or commuted sentences to over 1,500 individuals charged or convicted in connection with the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack. This action included full, unconditional pardons for the majority of these individuals, and commutations for 14 prominent figures, such as Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers and Enrique Tarrio of the Proud Boys, who had been convicted of seditious conspiracy. The clemency extended to individuals convicted of assaulting law enforcement officers, obstructing official proceedings, and other serious offenses.
Furthermore, the Department of Justice was directed to dismiss all pending indictments related to the events of January 6, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons was ordered to release any incarcerated persons affected by the pardons. This unprecedented use of presidential clemency effectively nullified the largest criminal investigation in U.S. history and has been widely criticized by legal experts, including yours truly, and law enforcement officials, as undermining the rule of law and potentially encouraging future acts of political violence.
Such behavior is flatly unacceptable in a constitutional republic. The pardon power is meant to correct injustices or show mercy in exceptional cases, not to encourage your supporters to commit political violence. By offering pardons to insurrectionists, Trump broadcasts that his loyalty is not to America or its laws, it’s to himself and his most radical devotees. He is willing to excuse deadly mayhem and tear the country apart if it benefits him personally.
When a leader rewards violence against his own country’s government, that leader is a danger to the nation. Trump has proven he will always side with those who flout the law on his behalf. That’s not “law and order”—it’s a cynical, authoritarian perversion of justice.
The MAGA Echo Chamber and the $787 Million Lie
Given Trump’s catalog of wrongdoing, one might wonder: how can millions of Americans still support him or doubt the seriousness of these facts? The answer lies in the toxic echo chamber of right-wing media that shields Trump’s base from reality.
For years, outlets like Fox News fed their viewers a steady diet of distortion and propaganda, amplifying Trump’s lies and never holding him accountable. In fact, this deceit was so egregious that it finally caught up with the liars in court. In 2023, Fox News agreed to pay an eye-popping $787.5 million to settle a defamation lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems after Fox spent months promoting Trump’s false claims of a “stolen” 2020 election. That’s three-quarters of a billion dollars, one of the largest defamation settlements in history, because Fox chose to broadcast lies to its audience. Internal messages from Fox executives and hosts (revealed in the case) showed that they knew the election fraud claims were nonsense, but they aired them anyway to pander to Trump supporters and chase ratings.
What does that tell us? It proves that many of Trump’s loudest cheerleaders in the media have been knowingly misleading MAGA voters. Millions of Americans were told not to trust our election, not to trust the courts, not to trust anything except Trump. No wonder so many decent folks got swept up in Trump’s big lie and genuinely believed they were “saving the country” on January 6. They were fed a fiction.
Fox’s massive payout is a stark admission that the conspiracy theories were built on sand. And yet, even after paying nearly $800 million for lying, Fox barely whispered an apology. The right-wing media machine continues to operate, flogging culture wars and spinning new excuses for Trump’s behavior, ensuring that many of his supporters remain trapped in an alternate reality where he’s always the hero and any setback he faces is a grand conspiracy against him.
This misinformation crisis deeply wounds American unity and democracy. A healthy democracy depends on citizens agreeing on basic facts, even if we disagree on policies. But Trump’s movement, propped up by these media echo chambers, rejects the facts outright. They dismiss court verdicts, independent journalism, and anyone who contradicts Trump.
When a significant chunk of the populace is convinced that truth is fake and lies are truth, how can we come together as one nation? Trump thrives in this division, he pours gasoline on every cultural fire and smears anyone who opposes him as un-American. It’s deliberate, and it’s destructive.
The Dominion lawsuit’s outcome should be a wake-up call: the lies are not harmless. They cost money, yes, but more importantly, they cost us our shared sense of reality. They misled people into breaking the law on January 6. They continue to fuel anger and victimhood among Trump’s base.
If we want to preserve American democracy, we must break out of the lie-machine. We must confront Trump’s supporters with the truth: their hero has been proven a fraud and a felon, and no amount of TV spin can change that.
Fair Trials and Overwhelming Evidence
Trump and his die-hard followers love to howl that every investigation and trial is “rigged” against him. But let’s talk about how our justice system actually handled Trump, because it shows just how fair and patient the system has been, even with someone as undeserving as him.
In both his criminal trial and the civil cases, the juries were selected through a meticulous process designed to ensure impartiality. Potential jurors were drawn from the community at random and were rigorously questioned (in a process called voir dire) by both Trump’s lawyers and the opposing side. Anyone who displayed clear bias or admitted they couldn’t be fair was dismissed. Both the prosecution and the defense had the right to strike a number of jurors they felt uncomfortable with. The end result? Jurors who took an oath to judge the case based on evidence alone.
These were not “Never Trump” partisans hand-picked to sabotage him; they were ordinary Americans doing their civic duty. In fact, consider the makeup of those juries: in New York City, you can bet some weren’t liberals, and in the E. Jean Carroll case, at least one juror was an avid viewer of conservative media. Yet they all listened to the evidence and reached the same conclusion: Trump was liable or guilty.
Why did they all agree? Because the evidence was overwhelming. This bears emphasizing. Our legal system also provides a safeguard after a jury renders its verdict: a trial judge can set aside a verdict or order a new trial if the jury’s decision is wildly unsupported by evidence or tainted by legal errors. This is not a common step, but it exists to prevent miscarriages of justice.
Did any of the judges in Trump’s cases throw out the verdicts? No.Not in the criminal trial, not in the Carroll civil trials, not in the New York fraud case. Quite the opposite: in some instances, judges had already determined Trump’s liability before the jury even decided damages, because the evidence was so clear-cut.
If Trump had a shred of credible defense, if these were truly “witch hunts” based on nothing, those cases would have fallen apart. A fair jury would have refused to convict or hold him liable, or a judge would have intervened. None of that happened. The system bent over backwards to be fair to Trump, and still the truth won out.
This is critical for Americans to understand. The verdicts against Trump were not a fluke of bias or a product of some shadowy cabal; they were the product of facts. The witnesses, documents, and Trump’s own words damned him.
In court, unlike in rallies or on Twitter, you can’t hide behind bluster. Trump had high-priced lawyers, the opportunity to present evidence, the chance to testify in his own defense if he wanted (he chose not to). The juries heard it all and spoke clearly. And if Trump’s team thought something was unjust, they filed appeals and motions, but judges consistently rejected his cries because they were meritless.
The bottom line is that our justice system worked as it should: carefully, deliberately, and impartially. It treated Trump not as a political figure but as a citizen answerable to the law, and he was found accountable. That’s not persecution; that’s justice.
America Must Reject This Betrayal
Donald Trump has repeatedly and brazenly betrayed America. He has betrayed our laws by committing felonies and fraud. He has betrayed our women and our values by sexually abusing and vilifying an innocent woman. He has betrayed his wives and family with his constant cheating. He betrayed our democracy by attempting to cling to power at all costs, even if it meant encouraging a murderous mob to rampage through our Capitol.
He has betrayed our troops and law enforcement by pardoning war criminals and promising amnesty to those who attacked police on January 6, and then giving out the pardons. He betrays truth itself every day with his incessant lying and conspiracy mongering. The damage he has done to the Constitution, to American unity, to the very idea of truth and decency, cannot be overstated. And he shows no remorse—ever.
This is not about left or right, conservative or liberal. This is about the fundamental moral and legal baseline we demand from our leaders. Trump fails that test spectacularly. He is, quite literally, a convicted felon and a proven fraud. Those are not slurs; those are the titles he earned in court.
Because this article is already too long, I didn’t even go into his six corporate bankruptcies, or how his initial denial of COVID is estimated by experts to have resulted in the unnecessary loss of hundreds of thousands of American lives. I didn’t spend time discussing how embarrassing and harmful his handling of Ukraine or the tariffs, or his self-dealing crypto ventures have been. And don’t get me started about how he recently sold out to the middle east directly to leaders who are murders (American journalist Jamal Khashoggi death) with one even being a former top commander of an Al-Qaeda franchise who had a $10 million bounty on his head.
Look, in a sane society, any one of the above things should be disqualifying for any position of trust, let alone the presidency. The fact that Trump still has a political pulse is a testament to how corrosive his influence and the right-wing MAGA echo chamber have been. But as citizens, we cannot shrug off what Trump has done. We cannot become numb to the sight of a demagogue shredding our norms and laws. Justice has finally begun to catch up with Trump, but it falls to us as Americans to ensure he never has the chance to betray us again.
The stakes could not be higher. Every time we excuse Trump’s conduct or “both-sides” his crimes as just another political controversy, we chip away at the rule of law and our national integrity. Enough. The time for equivocation is over. We must speak with moral clarity: Donald Trump is a criminal and a betrayer of the American trust. He crowned himself with the laurels of high office only to disgrace that office at every turn.
History will remember him as the first president to be impeached twice, the first to be convicted of crimes in court, and the one who left our democracy teetering on the brink. Our duty now is to ensure history also remembers that America had the courage to reject him.
In the end, Trump’s fate is not just about courtroom verdicts, it’s about the verdict of the American people. We must refuse to entrust our nation to a man so deeply corrupt, so indifferent to our Constitution, and so willing to betray his oath.
Trump has proven through his own actions that he deserves no power and no pardon from the judgment of history. He is a convicted felon and a proven fraud who has betrayed this nation repeatedly. Americans of conscience, across all parties, must unite to finally close the door on Donald Trump’s era of deceit and decline. Our republic’s future depends on remembering who Trump really is—and ensuring that such a man never, ever holds the reins of our democracy again.
Mitch Jackson, Esq. | links
This post is free.
But free doesn’t build the future.
Independent journalism only works when people like you choose to lean in—not just with attention, but with support.
If my work and message resonates with you,— today’s a great day to take the leap.
It’s also a unique gift to a family member or friend who is interested in this kind of commentary on breaking political news and democracy.
At just $7 a month. $70 a year. It’s a small investment in something bigger than all of us.
The Felon-in-Chief: A Historic Disgrace We Cannot Normalize
Let that sink in: The President of the United States—a position once synonymous with leadership, integrity, and moral authority—is a convicted felon.
Apologies to the heads of state, dignitaries, and even the Pope, who have been maneuvered into diplomatic exchanges with someone whose presence alone erodes the credibility of international relations. The forced photo ops and hollow pleasantries cannot conceal the sheer absurdity of it all.
This is not the America our ancestors bled and sacrificed for. They fought for democracy—not a circus where criminality is repackaged as political resilience. No amount of spin or strategic gaslighting will make this normal.
The world watches in disbelief as we teeter on the edge of irreparable disgrace. But make no mistake—there will be no passive acceptance. The resistance is real, the fury is mounting, and history will not be kind to those who enabled this farce. If delusions of intergalactic grandeur persist, well, there’s always a one-way ticket to deep space. Let’s make sure it’s a non-return flight.
Can't wait