A solution to the Trump saga? Try the Agnew angle.

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As the unprecedented legal travails mount for former President Donald Trump, highlighted by the documents case, there is a precedent for him, the various government bodies prosecuting him and the public that could be a salvation for all concerned.

It occurred 50 years ago this fall when Vice President Spiro Agnew simultaneously acknowledged his criminality and stepped down from office, effectively banished from public life. The same could occur now for the ex-president.

Agnew, a former Maryland politician and governor, was brought down by a longstanding bribery scheme, prior and during his vice presidency, in which he took money from contractors whom he helped get lucrative government contracts. Wallowing in the throes of the Watergate scandal and with the potential ouster of President Richard Nixon looming, federal and state prosecutors, working quietly and out of public purview, devised an innovative arrangement. Using Agnew's clear-cut criminal culpability as a lever, they removed him from office; criminal charges would not be brought if he departed from office, which he did by copping a plea and disappearing from view.

A comparable device could be used to accomplish the same results now: Trump could acknowledge some culpability, all charges would be dropped and he would cease his campaign to regain the White House.

There are several similarities between that maneuvering five decades ago and the current situation. In each instance, urgency was, or now is, essential. Agnew posed a threat to the republic if he ascended to the presidency and was able to continue his perfidy from the Oval Office outside the immediate reach of the law. Trump likewise poses an existential threat, heightened by the reported grandiose plans he has to reorganize the federal government in his own image along with the pledge by him and some supporters to exact vengeance on his many enemies, real and imagined. If he makes it back to the White House, it will be too late to stop his chicanery.

But there are a number of obstacles to pursuing this path. One is that there are multiple prosecuting teams in various jurisdictions handling vastly divergent matters of differing complexities, both federal and state, that would need to cooperate and coordinate their actions to assure that the criminal slates are wiped clean; the county prosecutor in New York, where the Stormy Daniels "hush money" case is pending; the prosecutor in Atlanta, where his vote manipulation effort is expected to yield charges soon; and the federal system, where the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case is just getting started and a Jan. 6 insurrection prosecution may be looming.

Getting all of them to agree to dispose of their cases simultaneously might be like herding cats compared to the relative ease in Agnew's situation of getting state and federal authorities to work together on a relatively narrow case.

Trouble also lurks in getting the accused to agree to the disposition. Agnew never formally admitted guilt; he entered a plea of nolo contendere, a device in which a defendant, in order to save face, does not acknowledge guilt but recognizes that there is enough evidence to result in a conviction. That device is known in Minnesota jurisprudence as an Alford plea: no expression of guilt but a recognition that a jury could determine guilt based on the known evidence. To his dying day 23 years later, Agnew adhered to the position he had never been adjudicated guilty or admitted to guilt.

Would any quid-pro-quo deal with Trump hold up? Article II of the Constitution establishes the three exclusive requirements for the presidency: 35 years of age, native-born citizen and resident in the country for 14 years. The courts have ruled that those conditions are exclusive and cannot be supplemented; even a criminal conviction or imprisonment cannot bar a person from eligibility for president. So, an agreement to stand down from his campaign may not be enforceable, and some type of plea deal might not encompass that disposition.

It would be up to the prosecutorial coalition to count on Trump to keep his word to drop his campaign (and not run again in the future) even if it is not legally binding, which may be a bridge too far.