Trump and Putin Pursued: What it all Means

Are Presidents above the Law?

The Hague, Monday, 

Strange coincidence: this month two mighty presidents, one of Russia and one of the USA are being pursued by prosecutors. The cases are quite different, of course, yet there is one thing in common. Both politicians seem convinced that it really doesn't matter WHAT they have done - and that they are literally above the law. But are they right? The BuffPo looks at the precedents.

President Putin is being accused of war crimes: specifically kidnapping and transporting thousands of Ukranian children to Russia to be 're-educated' in an attempt to erase their country's identity. 

The International Criminal Court, based in the Hague, does not have its own police force and admits it is very unlikely that the Russian leader can be arrested while he is still in office. However, it has called on all the 124 signatories to its convention to enforce the warrant if they can.

Putin is only the third head of state to have ever been indicted - the other two are Sudan's Omar Al-Bashir and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi. Charges against Gaddafi were dropped after he was assassinated, but in February 2020 the Sudanese government actually handed al-Bashir to the ICC for trial. In August 2021, al-Bashir, then aged 75, was convicted of money laundering but also corruption and sentenced to two years in detention.

The case of Donald Trump is very different. Despite, on the face of it, being behind an attempted insurrection that led to the deaths of five people and injuries to no less than 138 police officers, the charges he faces actually relate to… A 2016 hush money payment to a porn star!

This is the first criminal investigation Trump has faced since the late 1970s. Sources say he is deeply anxious about the prospect of an arrest and the humiliation of being fingerprinted. Trump is known to have watched in horror as television news showed his chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg (75), being arrested in 2021, the former president said he couldn't believe what was happening.

Perhaps more alarming though is that the US House of Representatives panel probing the 2021, attack on the Capitol has asked federal prosecutors to charge Trump with four crimes, including obstruction and insurrection, for his role in sparking the riot. The Democratic-led select committee's request to the Justice Department, after interviewing more than 1,000 witnesses, marked the first time in history that Congress had referred a former president for criminal prosecution.

In fact, Donald Trump would be the first US president to be arrested since the 19th Century leader Ulysses S. Grant who was collared for… Going too fast while driving his horse and buggy! The 18th president was pulled over by a police officer in 1876, with the officer telling him: 'Duty is duty sir and I will have to place you under arrest.'

It was the second time that Ulysses (then aged 40) had been caught racing around the roads in the capital and this time he had to pay $20 to walk free.

But back to the Russian president - even if he never leaves Russia again and avoids being arrested, will the charges at least bring a certain humility? That seems unlikely. Instead, a Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova said: "The decisions of the International Criminal Court have no meaning for our country, including from a legal point of view". She's not entirely wrong either, Russia is not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and so bears no obligations under it.

But sixty-one-year-old Dr. Chile Eboe-Osuji, a former President of the ICC, told Sky News that the arrest warrant is "very significant indeed" as it shows "no one is above the international law".

Far from the charges being a meaningless gesture, he recalled that every significant person in modern times targeted by the court ended up facing justice. And he added:

"There is no reason to think that this will be a different story."