While we are witnessing the slow death of Brexit, there is another drama developing in the USA as Donald Trump becomes mired ever deeper in multiple criminal trials across the nation. It has always been a country where the most amazing things happen but Trump is pushing those boundaries to even more bizarre levels. If it turned out that he was a paid Russian mole or even an alien being I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised, and probably nobody in America would be either.
He is totally out of control and gives regular interviews on prime-time TV shows where he reveals his own potential defence arguments but in doing so actually confesses to the crimes he’s accused of! This is all done, not so much inadvertently, as without any self-knowledge or even a basic understanding of the law and legal processes. None of his co-defendants in any of the cases are saying anything at all on the record, probably on legal advice.
Unfortunately, Trump can’t accept legal advice and loses attorneys regularly to the extent that he has to rely on inexperienced legal teams so it’s hard to know if he’s not getting the right advice or if he’s simply ignoring it. Probably it's a bit of both.
His words can and probably will be used against him in court.
The latest outburst came a couple of days ago when he spoke for an hour to an interviewer (Megyn Kelly) on a TV Channel called SiriusXM. He talks among other things about the federal case being heard in Florida involving him illegally taking top secret documents from the White House in January 2021 and storing them in various places at his Mar-a-Lago residence.
He appears to admit that he did it but his defence is that he was allowed to do it.
Other TV channels, podcasters, and YouTubers are openly analysing all these interviews, often with legal experts, and discussing what is likely to happen. MSNBC assembled a panel of experts to discuss the implications and it’s fascinating how certain they all are that he is guilty. What they agree on is that the evidence is clear and overwhelming and the arguments won’t be about ‘facts’ which are well established, but about whether or not what he was doing was illegal.
Trump says that he was “covered under the Presidential Records Act” but this is apparently not just not true, but the act itself was brought in after Richard Nixon tried to dispose of incriminating records to avoid impeachment in the early 1970s. It is specifically designed to prevent Trump from doing what he did.
Presidential records automatically transfer into the legal custody of the official archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) as soon as the President leaves office. Here is the MSNBC video referring to that interview. It's 11 minutes but well worth watching.
And note that not only did he take these classified documents unlawfully, but he also showed some of them to people without security clearance. He also ordered his own staff to hide boxes and boxes of this stuff to obstruct the authorities from getting them back and wanted security camera footage deleted! Again, this is indisputable, captured on audio and video tape and with witnesses who will testify against him.
At 5.10 secs in to the MSNBC clip he claims that if had classified documents they are automatically de-classified, something which again is indisputable untrue.
One, a former FBI general counsel, said Trump’s worldview is that as president he thought he was equivalent to a medieval king, where the law was whatever he said it was at any time. This is why he so admires Putin, Xi Jing Ping, and Kim Jon Un. Andrew Weissman also said the trial is less about politics than the foundations of US democracy, it’s why they fought a war of independence in 1776.
The panel of experts openly ridiculed Trump, and if you listen to the whole interview you can see why. He rambles and blusters and fibs for an hour with almost none of it on point or even semi-rational.
Trump's only slim hope is the judge - Aileen Canon, his appointee - will somehow ride to his rescue or that a jury will fail to convict. But it's not even certain she will stay on the case, some of her early decisions are a bit bizarre and she has already been rebuked by an appeals court panel.
It's clear that he should be toast, not just in Florida but in Washington DC (Jan 6 insurrection), Georgia (Racketeering and election interference), New York (Tax evasion), Michigan and other states (fake electors) as well as E Jean Carrol and Michael Cohen.
Trump is countersuing Cohen, his former lawyer, for $500 million, and in that case, Cohen is calling 14-15 witnesses to give evidence while Trump is calling just two, himself and Cohen!
I would speculate what might happen if Trump is jailed as seems certain at some point. He is neck and neck in the polls with Joe Biden and way ahead of any other Republican candidate so he has the support of well over 40% of voters. What that might lead to is too frightening to think about.
This week a former Republican party leader, Mitt Romney, no friend of Trump who he has criticised in the past, has announced he's retiring and revealed he is paying $5,000 a day for security for himself and his family to protect him from his own grass-root Republicans!
The next 12-24 months will be a wild ride for America. And it's all over one man's ego and inability to accept he lost an election or that he's simply congenitally incapable of working effectively in any public office - even dog catcher.
Romney has also written a book in which he claims one unnamed Republican senator told him that Trump had none of the attributes that you would want in a president and all the ones that you wouldn't.
A bit like Boris Johnson then.
