The Parallel Lives

In 2022, a jury convicted Elizabeth Holmes, founder of biotech firm Theranos, of four counts of defrauding investors. A judge sentenced Holmes to 11 years and 3 months in prison.

The film producer Harvey Weinstein was declared guilty of inappropriate relations with women twice, first at a trial in New York in 2020, and the second in California in 2022.

In 2018, the comedian Bill Cosby was sentenced to 10 years in prison for drugging and assaulting a woman, but in 2021, after serving three years in prison, he was released.

On October 2, 1978, Tim Allen was arrested in Michigan on drug charges. He received a sentence of three to seven years, but was paroled on June 12, 1981, after serving two years.

Allen went on to achieve fame on the sitcom “Home Improvement,” as well as in the movies.

On June 13, 1994, thirty years ago, Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman lost their lives at Nicole’s home. O. J. Simpson, the football star, was brought to trial, but a jury declared him not guilty of the crimes. The Trial of the Century did not end with a conviction.

On September 13, 2007, Simpson and other men entered a Las Vegas hotel room and left with sports memorabilia that Simpson claimed belonged to him. He was charged with multiple felony counts, was convicted, and on December 5, 2008, was sentenced to 33 years in prison.

He was released in December of 2021, but then died on April 10, 2024, of prostate cancer.

In October 1989, the televangelist Jim Bakker was convicted on all 24 counts of having defrauded investors in his PTL Club out of $158 million and was sentenced to 45 years in prison.

He was released on parole in 1994, after completing almost five years of his sentence.

In 2004, a jury found Martha Stewart, the television celebrity, guilty of “conspiracy, making false statements, and obstruction of justice.” She served five months in a federal prison.

On August 30, 1989, Leona Helmsley, the New York City real estate mogul, was convicted of 33 felony counts of mail fraud and conspiracy. She served twenty-one months in prison.

On June 29, 2009, Bernard Madoff was sentenced to the maximum number of years allowed, 150 years. He died at a Federal prison of kidney disease on April 14, 2021, at 82 years of age.

In 1992, the heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson was sentenced to prison for six years, but was released early in 1995.

From the above list one can see that men and women from all walks of life—sports, comedy, business, religion, television, and real estate—can find themselves in trouble with the law.

On May 30, 2024, a jury convicted a former president, Donald J. Trump, of 34 felony counts for falsifying business records to conceal a $130,000 payment to an adult film star.

This is the first time ever that the judicial system has convicted a former president of the United States for crimes committed when in office. Judge Juan Merchan will sentence Trump on July 11, and the judge may sentence Trump to prison for years.

Reaction to the conviction varies. Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institute writes,

“The United States has a more than two-century-long tradition of not prosecuting presidents, but the United States now has a president whose criminality was so relentless, so dangerous, and so unrepentant as to require the abrogation of that tradition.”

Republicans call Trump’s trial, “a travesty of justice,” “a kangaroo court,” “that the decision will get overturned by a higher court,” and that “ the judge advised the jury to use bad logic.”

Who do you believe? Whose words do you trust? I say, “This too shall pass.”

Trumpism, like McCarthyism of the 1950’s, will drift away. In the future, the American people will abandon Trumpism, and latch onto another ideology, one that, we can hope, is more wise, more congenial, and more suitable for the American people. “This too shall pass.”