Hard to think we won’t! Trump is a master at cutting off his nose to spite his face.
FBI Search and Seizure at Trump's Mar-A-Lago Residence, August 8, 2022, Case Dismissed July 15, 2024
Of the three routes this could have gone, I’m so very pleased that this was the result.
The worst route would have been the Court taking up the appeal for consideration. Even if, in the end, they decided not to reverse the stay placed by the 11th Circuit, I think it would have sent a poor message.
The next worst would have been not answering at all, just leaving it hanging there in limbo. Then TFG could have pointed to “waiting to hear what the Supreme Court has to say” any time he wanted to delay and muddle things a little more. (This is honestly where I thought we’d end up.)
But thankfully they quickly and decisively said they weren’t interested in getting involved. Sweet!
Layers upon layers of lawyers! How many layers of lawyers do you need to bury a lawyer?
Somewhere, under his breath, a frustrated Clarence Thomas was heard to have muttered, “Damn. THAT MF is crazy!”
/s
Just two. The original in a deep hole, back fill some then throw in the second so they’ll stop digging when they find it.
Conrad Black screwed up. What he should have done is order his flunky to remove the boxes, while he ate a nice hamberder in his office. Then when the flunky is caught on video, Black could have just said “That guy? Don’t even know him. I think he got me coffee once. I never even talked to him.”
And he would have gotten away with it.
Trump knows enough not to do the dirty work himself, and to deny, deny, deny ever giving any orders.
As I’m reading it, Conrad has said that Trump told him to move the boxes. No idea if there were any intermediaries.
If he doesn’t have it on tape or have other witnesses, he screwed.
They have it on tape.
Not the order, they don’t (as far as I know).
BUT if I’m on the jury, what’s more plausible (to a ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ standard):
Option 1: Flunky guy decides on his own to just randomly move a bunch of heavy boxes around the estate for…reasons.
Option 2: Flunky is ordered by boss to move heavy boxes around the estate because said boxes are responsive to a subpoena received by said boss wants to avoid said subpoena.
The conclusion is left as an exercise for the reader.
That’s a fair point.
But here’s how it went:
They interviewed the guy and he denied moving the boxes.
Then they showed him a tape of him moving the boxes.
Then he admitted he did move the boxes, but it was on Trump’s orders.
I believe there are also other witnesses to these events.
This, together with Trump’s evasion of the subpoena for months, Christina Bobb’s affidavit swearing that all the materials had been returned when they weren’t, all the efforts made by the National Archives to retrieve the records before DOJ became involved, testimony re Trump personally going through the boxes before directing aides to take certain boxes to his private residence (personal desk, no less),Trump’s lies about the FBI “planting” the records, Trump’s alleged efforts to bargain with the records in exchange for records in the 2016 Russia investigation… it’s not really a hard call what is a reasonable interpretation of the events when taken in total.
As many as nine boxes that Donald Trump’s aides hauled from his home in Florida this year to his New Jersey resort are raising new questions about the ex-president’s hoarding of secret government documents…
The National Archives, the custodian of government records, has said it believes members of Trump’s administration still have failed to turn over documents and electronic records. The agency hasn’t said it’s satisfied that everything has been recovered from Trump…
The Bedminster golf course has been the “subject of speculation for weeks now, based on video recorded days after the National Archives first reached out to Trump to say some documents were still missing,” [MSNBC opinion columnist Hayes] Brown noted.
Trump’s “pattern of behavior throughout this investigation should make it clear that there is probable cause to search Bedminster for any documents he continues to sequester,” added Brown.
Lucky for him, it grows back after each lie.
Now this is what I’ve been talking about!
He’s Wolverinocchio.
Even sympathetic judges/justices (including Trump appointees) will still say “dammit, don’t just ask me to save your ass because it’s your ass, give me a good legal basis to do so”. Team Trump should have noticed that two years ago.
The underlings probably did but they have to keep iDJiT happy.
I think it’s also worth mentioning that … in most of TFG’s current legal troubles – civil and potentially criminal – he can only win or tie.
Particularly since either others are paying his legal bills or they’ll likely go unpaid … it’s all upside for him to fight in any way, in any venue, using any conceivable argument, no matter how asinine.
No sarcasm meant.
I suspect that the Trump Organization might be effectively dismantled as a result of the NY AG lawsuit. That would be devastating to the Trump family.
Oh. There’s no doubt that potentially devastating consequences abound for this MF.
But that’s kind of my point: he has nothing to lose by fighting every conceivable thing in any conceivable way.
For somebody paying their own prodigious legal bills, the calculus might be very different.