Investigators are asking: How weak is Donald Trump?

03 April 2023

Last week, the New York Postran a cover story, in the wake of Donald Trump’s indictment, with this headline: “Teflon’s Gone.” The reference was to the criminal former president’s seemingly superhuman ability to avoid political consequences for things no one else could avoid. It was also in reference to a previous New York Post edition. The cover lines on March 2, 2016: “Teflon Don! Trump wins seven states: Mud fails to stick.”

Now that he’s been indicted, things appear to be sticking.

But things had always been sticking.

Politically, since it was discovered that Russia interfered on Trump’s behalf in the 2016 presidential election. Trump was impeached twice. He lost the 2020 election. (An incumbent hadn’t lost in the last four decades.) Adversity never made him stronger. It made him weaker. It’s been showing for a while.

But as we witness, for the first time in American history, today’s arraignment of a former president, let’s remember something else. Things had been sticking not only politically. They had been sticking legally, too.

I think we’ll look back to see how wrong we’ve been. Trump was never made of Teflon. Things stuck. They always stuck. First, gradually. Then suddenly.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg had given up investigating whether Trump paid, with campaign money, Stormy Daniels to keep quiet. But then, in December, a Manhattan jury “found two Trump Organization companies guilty on multiple charges of criminal tax fraud and falsifying business records connected to a 15-year scheme to defraud tax authorities by failing to report and pay taxes on compensation for top executives,” per CNN.

That gave Bragg a firm foundation to stand on.

We can expect that pattern to repeat itself.

The Postreported over the weekend that federal prosecutors “have amassed fresh evidence pointing to possible obstruction” by Trump in the investigation of government secrets found at his private Florida club. The evidence suggests that, after a subpoena had been delivered, “Trump looked through the contents of some of the boxes of documents in his home, apparently out of a desire to keep certain things in his possession.”

The AP ran a report this morning rounding up other investigations, including one in Washington, related to the J6 insurrection, and in Atlanta, related to attempts to interfere with vote counting in Georgia. These investigations, the AP reported, stand “in contrast to the last special counsel investigation involving Trump, when he was president and when Robert Mueller and his team of prosecutors sought to determine whether Trump’s 2016 campaign had colluded with Russia to tip the election.”

We can be sure that the heads of each of these investigations are going to watch today’s arraignment carefully. None wants to be singled out as attacking a former president. Together, though, it’s different. Together, their investigations look less like politics and more like the rule of law.

The rule of law is a facade. Any normal person under criminal investigation for, say, stealing government secrets would have been sentenced ages ago. But a former president isn’t a normal person. Everything he touches is political. So what the heads of each of these investigations is going to look for today isn’t about the law. It’s about answering a simple question:

How dangerous is it to prosecute Trump?

Which brings us back to things sticking, always sticking.

To gauge how dangerous it is to prosecute a former president who has announced his intention to run for president again, each investigation must gauge how strong he is politically. Or, more precisely, how weak he is. When he was president, the Republican Party protected him. He withstood Robert Mueller’s investigation. He withstood two attempts to remove him.

Now?

If he’s still strong, investigators will continue to be cautious. We’ll likely never see a criminal former president held accountable for his crimes.

But if he’s weak, expect Trump to stumble under the weight of everything that’s been sticking to him, politically and legally, for years and years.

Expect everything everywhere all at once.

Trump was never made of Teflon. He only looked that way. (He was made to look that way.) But he’s still a human being living within human limitations. Choices, therefore, have consequences. They always do. They might not accumulate as quickly as we’d like them to, but still they accumulate.

First, gradually.

Then, suddenly.

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