Maybe, maybe, all this criminality will end up being an obstacle to Trump’s dream of returning to the White House dining room so that he can throw more catsup at it.
Donald Trump’s legal perils have become insurmountable and could snuff out the former US president’s hopes of an election-winning comeback, according to political analysts and legal experts.
Meanwhile Politico is arguing that the legal perils just make the base love him more, but even if they’re right about that it won’t do him much good if he’s being held without bail.
On Wednesday, Trump and three of his adult children were accused of lying to tax collectors, lenders and insurers in a “staggering” fraud scheme that routinely misstated the value of his properties to enrich themselves.
The civil lawsuit, filed by New York’s attorney general, came as the FBI investigates Trump’s holding of sensitive government documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and a special grand jury in Georgia considers whether he and others attempted to influence state election officials after his defeat there by Joe Biden.
One two three legal perils.
“He’s done,” said Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University, in Washington, who has accurately predicted every presidential election since 1984. “He’s got too many burdens, too much baggage to be able to run again even presuming he escapes jail, he escapes bankruptcy. I’m not sure he’s going to escape jail.”
How embarrassing is it that we elected a flagrant shameless prolific criminal president?
Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, noted that the civil component “involves things of particular significance to Trump and his family and his organisation, namely their ability to defraud the public, to defraud banks, to defraud insurance companies, and to continue to subsist through corruption. Without all of that corruption, the entire Trump empire is involved in something like meltdown.”
The money is going to disappear, and the debt collectors are going to become all too visible.
No previous former president has faced investigations so numerous and so serious.
No previous president has been quite such a hardened criminal, although there have been some ringers.
Asked by a conservative radio host what would happen if he [were] indicted over the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, Trump replied: “I think you’d have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before. I don’t think the people of the United States would stand for it.”
Kurt Bardella, an adviser to the Democratic National Committee, said: “If the best defence you have for your conduct is: if you hold me accountable, there will be violence, that sounds like someone who has no business being either in public service or being outside of jail.”
Or on tv.
Comments
16 responses to “Is this the end of the dream?”
I might add a third “maybe” to your first sentence.
Though I guess it depends on what’s being predicted. It’s certainly possible that Trump’s legal problems could sway just enough voters to matter in another razor-thin election, the same way that fucking James Comey may have cost Hillary just enough votes in 2016. Even after the fact, that won’t be knowable or provable, just as I can’t prove the Comey letter was dispositive in 2016.
But I think anyone fantasizing about Trump in an orange jumpsuit is likely to be disappointed. (Not saying anyone here is — we seem to be a properly jaded lot.). An indictment won’t surprise me at this point. He’s more or less dared the feds to indict him on the documents thing. Possibly something comes out of the Georgia matter. Unlikely the feds take a run at any January 6-based charges, but not out of the realm of possibility I guess.
But between requests for continuances (because my client is running for president, dontchaknow), and interlocutory appeals and stay requests and every stalling tactic in the books, any actual trial will be after the 2024 election. (And if he wins that election, there ain’t gonna be no trial.)
An orange jumpsuit would colour-coordinate well with Trump’s hair. He could start a fashion trend right across the country similar to… I dunno… Beatlemania. Dye your hair, buy your jumpsuit to match, and join all the rest of your co-enthusiasts. Today Mar-a-Lago; tomorrow – the world.!
Hm. I’m not sure I was postulating a trial before the election…I think I was thinking more just obstacles on every hand to the point that it became hopeless. Sweeping generalities in other words.
Or perhaps that he’d flee the country.
I’ll bite. I confess to having fantasized about this on these very pages. More than once. A man can dream.
It would probably be impossible to empanel a jury. But I think it’s entirely possible for him to be ruined financially. Certainly if the Letitia James gets her way and he is barred from conducting business in state of New York. And nobody will extend him credit, and his current creditors will come after him. And his kids.
Also, I think enough Republicans have had enough of him, that there’s little chance he will be nominated for president in 2024. But it’s going to be a very interesting election season!
Fun with words (all the news is grim; I need some fun…)
Ringer (n) 2 a (1): one that enters a competition under false representations
I think this wants a different word, but I can’t think of a good one.
I was thinking there’s a slang usage of “ringer” that’s like doozy or similar.
It seems not. Fake, or likeness. Nothing about doozy. Ah well – maybe I meant it as in “very similar to hardened criminals.” Yeah that must be it.
I’ve always assumed the way you meant is usage from the game of horseshoes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoes
‘ a dead ringer’ is a not unusual term, at least in British English. It means someone who almost exactly resembles someone else. ‘He’s a dead ringer for Charles III.’ The OED has: ‘1a esp. US, an athlete or horse entered in a competition by fraudulent means…; b a person’s double, esp. an impostor.’
I was thinking ringer was a variation of dinger that I hadn’t heard yet, or a typo. Dinger fits pretty good.
I was thinking ‘humdingers’.
I confess to being another one who thought that he’d be in prison by now. I think that foreigners have a much greater faith in the justice systems of the USA than is probably warranted. USAians seem to have a more realistic view, in that you seem to accept that, in practice although not in theory, there is a whole class of people who are above – or beyond – the law.
It would have to be a first in American history. To my knowledge, nobody to date has escaped jail by winning the Presidency. After a period of immunity and being de facto above the law in the White House, he could find on losing the subesquent election he was booked straight into the Dade County Hoosegow, closest penitentiary to my knowledge to Mar-a-Lago, permitting ease of family visits from his children (those he knows about) and also interested parties like Stormy Daniels (no relation to Jack.)
@Tim Harris,
“Dead ringer” is common on this side of the pond as well.
As for Trump, I’ve always been on the fence about whether he’d end up in jail or not, but I am surprised that he isn’t dead yet, or at least incapacitated, given his attitude to nutrition and exercise.
What I wonder is if he will have enough influence over the party to be able to endorse primary winners. The Republican Party in Ohio, the same party that is sending money to J.D. Vance, has stopped funding QAnon Trumpish primary winner and Capitol Riots Patriot J.R. Majewski because of his anti-democracy verbal diarrhea:
https://www.axios.com/2022/09/22/house-republicans-ohio-trump-majewski?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=editorial
If Trump is indicted, whether he is convicted or not, I think that Republican activists who have supported him, will continue to move farther and farther towards the crazy and weaken the G.O.P. in the eyes of the electorate. My question is whether the Democrats will be able to capitalize, or if their embrace of gender ideology and the mainstreaming of fetish education will weaken them so much that people decide they don’t want to vote for anyone at all.
Politics has become a real mess in the last few years.
There’s a Radio 4 programme, Dead Ringers, a satire show featuring imitations of celebrities, politicians etc. (I’ve just listened to the first minute with a sketch of David Attenborough, essentially saying Why do I bother about climate change.)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0cmz800
Re Trump – it’s been great to be able tune him out, but I did listen to the clip of him saying he could declassify with his mind.