Donald Trump just gave away the game
Over the weekend Donald Trump sent his former criminal defense attorney onto television to make the laugh out loud claim that Trump won’t be indicted in his classified documents scandal. This attorney then provided the even more laugh out loud rationale that Trump won’t be indicted because Hillary Clinton supposedly did the same thing and wasn’t indicted.
On some level this attorney is just doing what Trump is paying him to do (or perhaps not paying him, given that it’s Trump’s former attorney). But Trump’s increasingly disastrous legal representation aside, the story here is that there is no story. This attorney is just going on TV and “announcing” whatever his client wants to hear.
It’s highly reminiscent of back when we could all see that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg was days away from criminally indicting Donald Trump, and Trump randomly announced that he’d heard the case against him had been dropped. That was yet another laugh out loud false claim, and Trump was indeed indicted days later.
So what’s the point of any of this? By now we all know not to take seriously any claims that Trump or his people might make about the legal process. At this point, if Trump claimed it were raining, none of you would believe him without looking out the window first. So you’re of course not going to fall for Team Trump’s last minute head-fakes about Trump supposedly being off the DOJ hook.
But I think it is worth noting that Trump and his people have turned into a counter indicator at this point. Once they’re certain an indictment is days away, that’s when they begin insisting as loudly as possible that the case has magically been dropped. And since that’s precisely what they just spent the weekend doing, it’s the surest sign we’ve seen yet that Trump will be indicted this week.
