Donald Trump’s former underlings may be turning on each other: In a development with echoes of Watergate, some former President Donald Trump’s entourage members appear to be positioning themselves to turn on one another.
Donald Trump Might Have a New Problem
Students of Watergate may remember that the beginning of the end for the Nixon presidency was when his underlings, fearing legal jeopardy for themselves, began cooperating with the government, sometimes even agreeing to implicate their former colleagues.
Now, it appears something similar may be happening with those around President Donald Trump’s orbit, following his most recent federal indictment.
No, it’s not likely to resemble a Watergate situation in which the bulk of the top staffers of the White House and presidential campaign all landed in prison.
But nevertheless, Rolling Stone reported over the weekend that “Trump’s ‘Co-Conspirators’ Are Already Starting to Turn on Each Other.”
“It is the ‘please don’t put me in jail, put that other guy in jail’ strategy that was sure to come up at some point or another,” Rolling Stone quoted a Trump-associated attorney as saying.
Trump’s federal indictment in the election case had listed six un-indicted conspirators, who are not identified by name, although ABC News and other outlets believe they have identified the first five, as Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Jeffrey Clark, and Kenneth Chesebro, all of whom are lawyers who played parts in various aspects of Trump’s plans to overturn the 2020 election.
The sixth coconspirator was identified as “a political consultant who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding,” and it’s not clear who that is, although the New York Times hinted that the sixth coconspirator may be campaign advisor Boris Epshteyn.
None of the six coconspirators have yet been indicted by the special counsel or any other prosecutor.
Per the Rolling Stone story, some among the alleged coconspirators, including Giuliani and Chesebro, have begun “casting blame towards others on the campaign’s legal team or people close to the then-president,” with Giuliani specifically taking aim at Powell, while Chesebro is “now trying to downplay his involvement in the effort, spreading the possible blame and criminal exposure elsewhere.”
Prosecutors are expected to put pressure on the indicted coconspirators, possibly trying to get them to cooperate, either against the others or even Trump himself.
“Sources who’ve been in the room with special counsel staff tell Rolling Stone that in the past several weeks, the special counsel’s office has signaled that they intend to put pressure on the half dozen ‘co-conspirators’ listed in the Trump indictment,” the Rolling Stone story said. “Representatives of the special counsel’s office also appear unusually well-briefed on the existing fissures between members of the Trump post-election endeavors, according to those who have spoken with the office.”
One person quoted by the magazine expected more charges. That person called it “highly probable that several others will be charged… Jack Smith is not slowing down.”
The story also noted that Chesebro, unlike the other lawyers involved in the case, is not a longtime associate of the conservative media. In fact, as pointed out in an Air Mail story last week by Jeffrey Toobin, Chesebro appears to have been a Democrat until relatively recently. He even assisted Al Gore’s team in the 2000 Supreme Court cases. Chesebro, per the story, invested in crypto, made a great deal of money, and divorced his wife in the 2010s, which coincided with his shift leftward.
A former associate of his, Laurence Tribe, wrote for Just Security last week about Chesebro’s “misrepresentation” of Tribe’s past work in his work for Donald Trump.
“I can say with confidence that the proposition that Chesebro misattributes to me is one I have never embraced. Among other things, it completely disregards the role of the Electoral Count Act – and, even more fundamentally, of Article II of the Constitution in empowering Congress to set the “‘time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes, which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.’”
Author Expertise and Experience:
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
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