Donald Trump and His “Very Best People” Are Turning on Him – The pressure is on against former President Donald J. Trump.
In a fight to the last, the forty-fifth president has been stuck with 37 counts of violating the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice charges related to the ongoing classified documents case that federal prosecutor, Special Counsel Jack Smith and his Washington, D.C.-based investigation has brought against Mr. Trump.
This all stems from the fact that the former president took hundreds of documents he was not authorized to keep when he departed the White House in January 2021.
Donald Trump has always flirted with legal problems. As he argues, most of those cases brought against him, many of the accusations he’s been made to endure over the course of his life as a public figure, have either been exaggerated or false.
The majority of those times, Trump has been proven right on some level. They were overwrought or outright false.
Sadly, though, a smidgeon of these cases are justified.
This Time Things Really Are Different for Donald Trump
Whereas before he was president, the legal woes Trump faced were mostly civil and ultimately could be dealt with by throwing enough money at the problem to make it go away, that is no longer an option for the former president.
This is particularly true for the matter of mishandling classified documents.
Very technically, the former president likely was at fault. That fact is what the federal government uses to hang around the former president’s orange neck (with the hopes that he’ll be donning an orange jumpsuit). Trump has put up a gallant fight.
Ultimately, though, the prosecution believes it has the former president dead-to-rights.
And this is all occurring simultaneously alongside other investigations into Trump that threaten his legal future as well—notably the pending grand jury investigation in Georgia over claims that the former president attempted to unduly influence the election in Georgia during the legal challenges to the 2020 Presidential Election outcome.
News has come out showing that the Trump legal team got a bit of a reprieve when a Trump-appointed federal judge was made the presiding judge over the classified documents case (which has been moved from Washington, D.C. to Miami, near where Mr. Trump lives). Because of this, the prosecution is preparing to flood Trump with another spate of charges—around 30 or 45 charges—on top of the original 37 that Trump is currently charged with.
This, by the way, is what prosecutorial overreach looks like. If the prosecution doesn’t like the way the judge is being “deferential” toward the former president, they will smother him with many more charges in what’s known as a “superseding indictment.”
Alas, the prosecution is allowed to do this.
If the Biden Administration wants to hand the GOP presidential nomination to Trump (and I think they do because they believe they can more easily defeat him), then they will encourage this egregious behavior by Jack Smith.
Still, Trump will be up a proverbial legal creek when the prosecution decides to do this.
Ultimately, Trump is probably guilty of mishandling the documents and obstructing the attempts by the federal government to retrieve those documents. That’s why such an emphasis has been given to this case by the Democrats and their allies in the media.
Everyone knows this, along with the Georgia grand jury investigation, will be the case that puts Trump in the most legal jeopardy.
Giuliani and Meadows May Have Flipped On Trump…
It would appear that many of Trump’s closest allies know this as well.
His former lead attorney, Rudy Giuliani, is supposedly voluntarily meeting with Jack Smith’s team to be a “queen for a day”. What that means is that, for a day, Giuliani is given immunity from anything he tells the investigators. The information cannot be used against him by Smith.
Giuliani is doing this because the man that was once venerated after the 9/11 attacks as “America’s Mayor” now finds himself in legal jeopardy for having allegedly made “multiple false representations” to the courts while challenging the results of the 2020 Presidential Election.
Trump’s lead attorney is cooperating with the Department of Justice (DOJ). He is being given a special immunity to help those investigators involved with the classified documents case as a way of currying favor with the DOJ for when his inevitable case begins.
Therefore, it sounds an awful lot like Giuliani may be flipping on his one-time client, Donald Trump.
Lawyers who’ve represented Trump have a tendency to see their reputations trashed as a result of having represented him, oftentimes have major falling outs with the former president, and, as was the case for the last few attorneys for Trump—including Michael Cohen—are made to testify against their client. If that is what in play with Giuliani, it will not bode well for Trump.
And that’s not to say that I believe the former president should have the book thrown at him over this case the way that the federal government is throwing the book at him.
I do not believe that at all.
But the former president has truly miscalculated in what fights to pick with the Administrative State and how to fight them (and who to rely on as his representatives).
Giuliani is not the only person in Trump’s inner circle who might be turning on the former president. Sadly, it seems that his last White House Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, seems to be cooperating with investigators as well.
Along with Giuliani, Meadows is one of the main targets of the Georgia-based grand jury investigation into Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. As with Giuliani, Meadows is desperate to shield himself from whatever culpability the grand jury there may seek to hold him to.
Meadows Moves to Save Himself?
Earlier this year, Meadows is believed to have met with Jack Smith as part of Smith’s investigation into the classified documents case. In that meeting, the former White House chief of staff—the most powerful man in the Trump Administration, other than Trump himself—may have given evidence to Smith’s investigators in exchange for Meadows pleading guilty to what many say is a lesser crime.
In essence, Meadows saved himself by giving Jack Smith something meatier on Donald Trump in relation to the mishandled classified documents case that Smith is overseeing.
Meadows’ attorney denies that the former White House chief of staff copped a plea deal with Smith’s investigators.
Yet, Meadows is known to have signed an agreement with the DOJ that explicitly outlines his legal obligations to assist the DOJ in any future prosecution against the forty-fifth president—or others who may have been involved with Trump (such as Mr. Giuliani).
Such an action on Meadows’ part, will spare him from the same kind of legal threats that Trump and the rest of his inner circle now face.
Trump is both a victim of a politically weaponized federal bureaucracy as well as a violator of the law. While his violations do not merit the harshness of the treatment he’s received (especially when President Joe Biden did the same thing with classified documents and will likely never face punishment for that behavior), the fact remains that Trump did violate the law.
This violation is giving his enemies the kind of ammunition they need to truly threaten him legally.
Things have gotten so out-of-control, not just because our federal agencies are clearly in service to one party (the Democrats) against the Republicans, but because Trump was sloppy.
And he relished in being sloppy.
Now, he has put his top soldiers, such as Giuliani and Meadows, in the impossible position of either taking the fall for his sloppiness or saving themselves.
These are highly educated, accomplished men in their own rights, with families and lifestyles to consider.
Meadows and Giuliani will throw Donald Trump under the bus – just as so many close advisers caught up in Trump’s web of sloppiness over the years have – to save themselves from whatever punishment the politically motivated DOJ will create.
The Only Way We Stop the Weaponization of the Justice System is If a Republican Wins in 2024
The only way this all will change is if the system itself is changed and taken away from the partisan hacks now running it and weaponizing it against Republican candidates.
And that won’t happen unless a Republican is in charge.
The question that must be answered by everyone is: can Donald Trump win, with all these legal woes affecting him or will they turn off the all-important independent voters? I fear the answer to that.
A 19FortyFive Senior Editor, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (Encounter Books), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
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