Even if he loses the elections, the President of the United States remains in full power until his successor takes office, and a politician heard by Lusa admits that Donald Trump is prepared to “use and abuse his powers to the fullest”.
If the victory of Democratic candidate Joe Biden is confirmed in the presidential elections last Tuesday, the current President of the United States, Donald Trump, will maintain his powers until 12 noon on January 20, 2021, at which time that the next White House occupant will be sworn in.
The United States Constitution provides that the presidential term lasts exactly four years, with President Trump taking office on January 20, 2017. “He has exactly all the powers he had, nothing changes”, Portuguese-American political scientist Daniela Melo, who teaches at Boston University, told Lusa.
The expert explained that, in the coming months, Donald Trump will be what in the United States he calls himself as lame duck President, or “President pato lame”, a period in which the head of state is not expected to do anything relevant. But Daniela Melo does not believe this will happen: “He loses legitimacy, in a way, but that doesn’t mean he loses his powers. From a president like Trump we can expect him to use and abuse his powers to the fullest.”
The political scientist anticipates that Donald Trump will take steps to protect himself and grant pardons to friends and allies. “Maybe he will try to forgive himself and his family. There are lawyers who have been telling him for four years that he can do that.”
Even during the transition to the new President, the current head of state keeps his powers intact, being able to make appointments, dismissals, pardons, executive orders, veto or sign legislation prepared by the congress and everything that the post gives him.
The president has, for example, the power to make about 4,000 appointments to government positions, with only 1,000 requiring confirmation in the Senate (as judges for the Supreme Court). “I imagine he will try to use his position as President to make last-minute deals to benefit financially”, Melo said, referring that this may include negotiations with other countries.
Personal dismissals and revenge may also happen. At one of the last pre-election rallies, Donald Trump told supporters he was going to fire doctor Anthony Fauci, who leads the White House’s response to the covid-19 pandemic, the day after the election.
Daniela Melo said she hoped that the President would not accept the result and would maintain legal disputes over the elections “at least until December 14”, the date on which the electoral college formally votes for the next president. “I bet this will be the first President of America who doesn’t give a concession speech, at least in modern times.”
This could also mean a fragmented or non-existent administrative transition process, breaking an important presidential rule in the United States. The Presidential Transition Act of 1963 established the parameters according to which the peaceful transition of power between administrations must take place, which includes access to highly classified information.
This transition has been made over this two and a half month period for more than 80 years, since the inauguration of new presidents began in January.
According to historian Donald Nieman, dean of the University of Binghamton, the date of January 20 for the inauguration ceremony was fixed in 1933 by the 20th Constitutional Amendment, after a long time to happen on March 4.
However, the time gap between the November elections and the start of a new presidency in March – the “lame duck” presidency period – was considered too long, as it kept a president in power that the electorate had potentially rejected, and the new date came into effect in 1937.
New president may only be known on the day of the inauguration
The truth is that, taking into account the on-going judicial fight by Trump regarding the legality of vote counting, the name of the president for the next five years may, in an extreme case, only be known on January 20, the the day of the inauguration and on which a new President has to take office, even if only temporarily.
In the middle of a pandemic, with the outgoing President, Donald Trump, contesting the results, announcing that he is going to the Supreme Court, no analyst risks saying when it will be known who will be the next President of the United States.
On the other hand, in the United States there is no national electoral law: each state has its own rules and defines its own schedules, either to accept postal and / or early votes, or to define the times for their counting or to establish forms of voting. resolve dispute cases.
The process can pass through the Supreme Court and end up in Congress where, according to the Constitution, a President must be chosen, who must take office on January 20, even if only temporarily, who, in an extreme situation, can be the leader majority of the House of Representatives or, following the line of succession, the ‘pro tempore’ president of the Senate.
President Donald Trump has been suspicious for several months about the legitimacy of the final outcome of the elections, claiming he has no confidence in the postal votes, which this year have hit highs, with more than 100 million voters choosing this option, because, among other reasons, the covid-19 pandemic. The President and Republican candidate has even used the term “electoral fraud”, asking his supporters to be “very attentive” to the processing of votes and vote counts.
Against this backdrop, both the Republican and Democratic Joe Biden candidacies created panels of lawyers to analyze and counter complaints that may arise during the final assessment of the elections, anticipating a scenario of litigation in the courts.
In the past few weeks, several tens of millions of people have voted by mail and the first difficulty here is to guess the date when the results of the presidential elections will be known.
Counting each vote by post implies complex mechanisms, some of which were developed manually, and several states only started counting from election Tuesday, as is the case in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
The process begins with the verification of the envelope containing the vote, which has a code bar that seeks to ensure that the same voter does not vote more than once, which is followed, in some States, by the moment of verification that signature corresponds to the records.
The ballot papers are then sent to scanners who read the content of the voter’s decision, but any poor reading returns the document for human analysis, before the count is declared official.
In states crucial to this 2020 presidential election, such as Pennsylvania, officials have warned that this process can take several days, without wanting to commit to a date.
In addition, this process can be contaminated by challenging the deadline rules for receiving postal votes, as is happening in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, where the Supreme Court allowed electoral commissions to accept votes by mail which, albeit with postmark until election day, just arrive on the following days.
Republicans had contested this Democratic plea, claiming that voters were responsible for the delays, so electoral commissions should not have to wait for ballots to arrive after Tuesday, November 3.
The legal dispute is reminiscent of what happened in the 2000 elections between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore, delaying the announcement of the winner, or as in 2018, in the mid-term elections, in which the count went on for several days. .
In 2000, the case dragged on to the Supreme Court, which took 36 days to rule on the recount of votes, denying it and thus giving Bush victory.
Experts anticipated before the November 3 elections that this year the likelihood of contestation was much greater, mainly because of postal votes, and could ultimately prolong the process for several months. Trump’s allegations of fraud accentuate the stalemate.
The deadline is the date of the inauguration, marked by the 20th amendment of the Constitution for January 20: on this day, a President has to be installed.
In addition to the impasse, the original American electoral system, which leads to the presidential elections in the USA being decided by votes in the Electoral College, made up of 538 Great Voters from the 50 American states – distributed according to the demographic weight -, and that they are obliged to cast their vote for the candidate most chosen by local citizens in the election.
The exception goes to the states of Nebraska and Maine, which distribute the four major voters who are each entitled to the two candidates.
The projections of the main North American media attribute to today 264 Great Voters to Joe Biden, while Donald Trump has attributed 214.
Winners are those who gather at least 270 large voters, but these numbers will only be made official after the electoral commission of each state certifies the electoral results.
If there are any contestation of results in some States, it will be the members of the House of Representatives who can make decisions, case by case, on the composition of the Electoral College that will determine the majority that elects the President.
If in the following days, and until January 20, there is no political clarification in Congress, and while new votes are taking place in Congress, the majority leader (who is now Democrat Nancy Pelosi) may be installed. as interim President, for being the third in the line of succession (after the position of vice-president, whose choice will also be conditioned).
If eventually the leader of the House of Representatives is unwilling to accept the position, he moves on to the fourth in the line of succession, the ‘pro tempore’ president of the Senate, who is currently Republican Chuck Grassley, chosen for this post by his peers, but that could turn out to be another figure if Democrats win a majority in this Congressional body.
These were the details of the news Trump will keep powers intact until he takes office on January... for this day. We hope that we have succeeded by giving you the full details and information. To follow all our news, you can subscribe to the alerts system or to one of our different systems to provide you with all that is new.
It is also worth noting that the original news has been published and is available at time24.news and the editorial team at AlKhaleej Today has confirmed it and it has been modified, and it may have been completely transferred or quoted from it and you can read and follow this news from its main source.
