Donald Trump Is Guilty Of ‘Negligent Homicide’ For Coronavirus Response, Legal Analyst Says
During an interview with Salon writer Chauncey Devega, MSNBC legal analyst Glenn Kirschner said that Donald Trump is guilty of “negligent homicide” for his response to the coronavirus pandemic and should face criminal prosecution.
“The lowest level of homicide has three elements to the crime, and Donald Trump satisfies them easily,” he said of the charge.
“The first element is that a person commits an act in a grossly negligent manner. Or there is a duty to perform an act and a person fails to perform it in a grossly negligent matter.”
The analyst pointed to Trump’s alleged failure to act appropriately as president amid the pandemic, which he equates to gross negligence.
The second factor, Kirschner said, consists of “grossly negligent” failure to engage in actions or engagement in actions that reasonable calculations determined would lead to death or serious bodily injury. For this element, the prosecutor claimed that Trump’s failure to react appropriately to contain COVID-19 satisfies the criteria.
The former Robert Mueller prosecutor said the final element of the charge is causation, which he said must prove that Trump’s COVID-19 response was not just “grossly negligent” but “reasonably likely” to cause serious bodily injury or death.
Kirschner has been outspoken about his belief that Trump is guilty of crimes. As The Inquisitr reported, the previously told The Intercept’s Mehdi Hasan that the president could be prosecuted after leaving office for his alleged dealings with Russian President Vladimir Putin during their 2018 summit in Helsinki, Finland.
According to the legal analyst, the American president provided Putin with aid and comfort, which he said falls into the crime of “accessory after the fact” under the U.S. Criminal Code Section 3.
Trump’s response to the coronavirus crisis has been polarizing and pushed many to suggest that he face criminal charges, The Independent reported. His niece, Mary Trump, author of Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, previously said he should be charged for his handling of the crisis, which has killed approximately 167,000 Americans as of Friday afternoon.
“If you have it in your power to save somebody’s life but stand by and do nothing, isn’t that negligent homicide or something like that?” she asked.
The clinical psychologist pointed to Trump’s purportedly partisan approach to dealing with state governors amid the pandemic and suggested this strategy, which she linked to American deaths, was tantamount of a crime. Mary Trump claimed that the president has “no accountability” for his actions and must face a “reckoning” for the purported destruction he has caused.
