How Autocrats Are Held Accountable

Chronicling and analyzing resistance to the threat that autocracy poses to American liberal democracy, this book provides the definitive account of the roles that courts and elections played in holding Trump accountable for his actions.

This book describes the many lawsuits brought against Trump and his supporters for their autocratic actions. Trump was found liable in two civil lawsuits: for nearly $100 million for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll and for nearly $500 million for fraudulently valuing his real estate properties. Trump supporters and associates suffered even greater liabilities for defamation. And many of his lawyers were disciplined by professional associations. New York successfully prosecuted Trump for falsifying business records in connection with hush money payments to Stormy Daniels. Georgia obtained guilty pleas from four Trump associates implicated in efforts to change that state’s electoral votes, although the case against Trump was derailed by prosecutorial misconduct. Special Counsel Jack Smith initiated two prosecutions against Trump: for concealing classified papers and for seeking to overturn the 2020 election. But the Supreme Court created a novel doctrine of presidential immunity; and those cases were dismissed before Trump’s second inauguration. The book also analyzes the 2024 election, which Trump won with a bare 1.5 percent majority. It exposes his intensifying vilification of immigrants and transgender people and the numerous falsehoods he and his supporters disseminated. The book concludes by evaluating all the varied forms of resistance to autocracy described in the five volumes of the Defending American Democracy mini-series.

This definitive account and analysis of Trumpism and the resistance to it will appeal to scholars, students, and others with interests in politics, populism, and the rule of law and, more specifically, to those concerned with resisting the threat that autocracy poses to liberal democracy.