Donald Trump and his people are completely in over their heads

| 9:49 pm EDT August 11, 2022
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Last week Donald Trump’s criminal defense team kept getting the media to print stories about how they were supposedly “in talks” with the DOJ about its criminal probe into Trump. Since that’s not really a thing under these circumstances, it raised questions about why Trump’s lawyers were so desperate to get the narrative out there that they had things under control. After all, such an effort typically points to very much not having things under control.

Now we’re starting to get a better sense of why Trump’s team is so panicked: they’re in completely over their heads. They apparently didn’t see the FBI’s search and seizure warrant at Mar-a-Lago coming. They certainly didn’t see it coming when Attorney General Merrick Garland filed in court today to have the search warrant unsealed, which would inform the public about the nature of the classified documents that Trump stole. And however the media learned tonight that the Feds were looking for stolen nuclear secrets in Trump’s home, Trump’s people apparently weren’t ready for that either.

Then again, when Trump’s lawyers spent the week vaguely suggesting to the media that the Feds had planted the evidence in Trump’s home just so they could seize it and frame him, it did point to the seized evidence being particularly damning. Otherwise why resort to the absurd and low-percentage defense that the evidence was planted? So Trump’s lawyers must have had a sense of just how bad this is for Trump. Yet they don’t seem to have any idea how to handle it.

Earlier today ABC News reported that Trump’s lawyers are trying to find other lawyers who can help them figure out how to challenge the DOJ’s motion to unseal the warrant. Wait, Trump didn’t hire any lawyers who know how to do that kind of thing? Did it not occur to him and his legal team that they’d come up against this kind of problem eventually?

In fairness to Trump’s legal team, there is no effective defense strategy – in court or in the media – if your client stole nuclear secrets and stashed them in his basement. If you get caught doing that, it’s just something you go down for. There are no ace lawyers who can magically get you off the hook for that kind of thing. So perhaps it doesn’t matter if Trump hired the right lawyers. There’s no getting out of this kind of mess.