Bankruptcy and prison
On Friday morning Donald Trump learned that New York State has spent weeks ramping up its criminal case against him, putting witnesses from his bank and insurance broker in front of a grand jury, meaning Trump is going to be indicted for financial crimes. On Friday evening, Trump learned that the Supreme Court wasn’t going to magically bail him out.
Short of those who have passed away, has any American political figure ever had a worse day than the one that Trump just had? Not only is he going down on criminal charges that he can’t pardon, they’re the kind of cut and dry financial charges that he all but certainly can’t beat at trial. Moreover, the charges point to the total unraveling of Trump’s financial house of cards in the process of sending him to prison.
The only way Donald Trump was going to avoid prison was if he managed to somehow magically remain in office indefinitely, and now that’s out the window. It’s the ultimate one-two gut punch that’s suddenly left him with, well, nothing.
From the day Trump lost the election by a sizable margin, this was always going to be the outcome. New York was always going to indict him on financial charges; you don’t have a grand jury target someone for more than a year like this, without substantial criminal charges arising from it in the end. The courts were never going to overturn the election result unless it came down to a few hundred votes in the deciding state. It’s been over for Trump for more than a month. But he’s even lost the one thing he had left: desperate hope. His life is about prison and bankruptcy now.
