Donald Trump is toe-to-toe with the law like he’s never been. On February 1, both Fani Willis, Fulton County’s elected district attorney, and the serious investigators for the House Select Committee probing January 6 punched back. Trump’s January 29 Texas rally speech had included trash-talking those who would hold him to account.
Trump labeled the prosecutors who are closing in on him in Atlanta and New York “racists” and called for “massive rallies” against them. I can say, as a former prosecutor who has been threatened, that will energize them.
Trump also admitted his support for the January 6 attack by offering, should he return to the White House, pardons to January 6 insurrectionists. They include 11 Oath Keepers now indicted for seditious conspiracy.
No one who remembers Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, and Steve Bannon’s convictions and pardon-dangles can doubt Trump’s message: “Don’t cooperate with them; I’ll have your back.”
In this fight, however, unlike the one with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Trump doesn’t have the DOJ in his corner or William Barr as his corner man. And his opponents today learned some lessons from watching the special counsel fall short in 2019.
So the counter punches came quickly.
On February 1, Willis called in the FBI over Trump’s threat and formally acknowledged that he’s her investigation’s target.
On the same day, we learned that the select committee had received taped-back-together White House documents ripped up by Trump. That violates the Presidential Records Act. Prosecutors may use that offense to show consciousness of guilt.
The select committee also let it be known that it is focused on Trump’s role in a scheme to seize voting machines in multiple battleground states. The news of that lawless plot broke last week, part of the committee’s relentless torrent of disclosures.
It was humbling enough for Trump to lose his Supreme Court executive privilege case on January 19. But soon after the loss came the release to the committee of the White House documents, Trump’s trunks slipped further when the documents exposed a draft order authorizing the military to seize the voting machines, an order that he wanted to keep secret.
No comments:
Post a Comment