Trump is incapable of understanding his legal peril
or how Trump's personality is making his lawyers' job harder
The Mar-a-Lago documents problem keeps getting worse for Donald Trump; and once he’s indicted, Trump will have no one to blame.
The possibility that an indictment for violating the Espionage Act will be an “if” and not a “when” gets more remote with every Trump utterance.
As former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade put it on The Katie Phang Show,
"The public wouldn't even know about this search if Donald Trump himself had not publicly announced it and, in fact, I think there is a good possibility that the Justice Department would have been happy to just get the documents back but he has made such a battle of it, and now, I think it makes it very difficult to get the Justice Department to decline to file charges here."
Trump’s go-to strategy of bullying and braggadocio may yield political wins, but it’s a losing one in court according to McQuade,
"Donald Trump's defense is to win the court of public opinion, to win the news day; he's thinking about today. He's not really thinking about tomorrow and most lawyers will tell their clients not to say anything. Because whatever you say can be used against you. So I think we're seeing some of that come home to roost here."
And, it’s not as if Trump did not have an abundance of legal eagles telling him the obvious about the boxes of documents he removed from the White House and stored at his Mar-a-Lago club. Former White House counsel Eric Herschmann1 and others2 told him as much.
In a Septemer 20th editorial, conservative writer Jennifer Rubin put even more succintly,
“Trump never learns. He continually disregards the advice of serious lawyers. Instead, he searches for answers he prefers from cranks, incompetents and partisan ideologues. (In the case of Mar-a-Lago, he has reportedly turned to non-lawyer and right-wing zealot Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch.) That not only lands him in hot water but also risks making the serious lawyers into adverse witnesses against him.”3
Trump’s narcissisism and illusory superiority complex (aka Dunning-Kruger effect) have made it impossible for him to follow sound legal advice. Donald Trump doesn’t seek legal counsel, he hires lawyers to do his bidding.
The net effect of this is that Donald Trump now has his lawyers doing the Texas Two-step with the special master, Judge Raymond Dearie, over the documents seized from Trump’s Mar-aLago residence (and elsewhere in the club).
So much so that Dearie wrote a 7 page case management memo that included this:
“No later than September 30, 2022, Plaintiff shall submit a declaration or affidavit that includes each of the following factual matters:
a. A list of any specific items set forth in the Detailed Property Inventory that Plaintiff asserts were not seized from the Premises on August 8, 2022.
b. A list of any specific items set forth in the Detailed Property Inventory that Plaintiff asserts were seized from the Premises on August 8, 2022, but as to which Plaintiff asserts that the Detailed Property Inventory’s description of contents or location within the Premises where the item was found is incorrect.
c. A detailed list and description of any item that Plaintiff asserts was seized from the Premises on August 8, 2022, but is not listed in the Detailed Property Inventory.
This submission shall be Plaintiff’s final opportunity to raise any factual dispute as to the completeness and accuracy of the Detailed Property Inventory.”
Five paragraphs from the case management order basically saying “you agree this is what was seized on August 8, 2022 from Mar-a-Lago (the Premises) and nothing is missing”.
A full listing of how Judge Dearie is dealing with the pedantry of Trump’s lawyers and their refusal to commit to any particular legal position is laid out on LawandCrime.com, including the complete case management order.4
Donald Trump believes he has to win, and as a result someone has to lose. And like an addict, he needs to have that “high” that he has won — every day. But, there is nothing for Trump to win in this legal battle — as Barbara McQuade pointed out, the government likely would have been satified to just have the documents back.
Unfortunately, Donald Trump is incapable of learning a very simple lesson — if you need an army of lawyers to conatin your legal problems, every day you aren’t arrested for breaking the law is a win.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/19/us/politics/trump-herschmann-documents.html
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-documents-ignored-warnings/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/20/trump-classified-documents-dearie-special-master/
https://lawandcrime.com/trump/special-master-lays-out-detailed-roadmap-of-things-to-come-in-mar-a-lago-clash-between-trump-and-doj/