Donald Trump just stupidly set a precedent that’ll ensure the people closest to him end up in prison
Donald Trump finally got a victory tonight, at least in his own deluded mind, when his remaining loyalists at the DOJ managed to get former Senate staffer James Wolfe indicted. Wolfe leaked information to the New York Times, but was ultimately indicted for the crime of lying about it to the FBI. If he did lie to the Feds, then it’s hard to defend him. But Trump and his people just very stupidly set a precedent that’ll ensure his people will go to prison.
The Wolfe case is a reminder that, whenever the Feds catch someone doing something that may be difficult to prove in a court of law, they interview that person, try to catch the person in a lie, and go after the person for perjury. Whatever you think of these tactics, it’s commonplace. In fact it’s what ultimately forced George Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn to cut plea deals. But Trump never cared about them. This just changed the math for the people he does care about.
If you’ve been worried that the Trump administration’s top officials and members of Donald Trump’s family wouldn’t be charged and tried for transactional crimes, this changes everything. Trump and his own DOJ just set the precedent. Now that a Senate staffer has been indicted for lying to the Feds, it means Attorney General Jeff Sessions will also be indicted for lying under oath to the Senate during his confirmation hearings. Trump doesn’t care about Sessions. But it also means Donald Trump Jr will be indicted for lying under oath to the House Intel Committee. And that’s just the start.
Despite the mountain of evidence against Donald Trump Jr, it was always going to be a complex task to try and convict him for conspiring against the United States, because those kinds of charges are qualitative. But now we know that Trump Jr will go down for perjury, because Trump Sr just ensured that perjury charges are on the table for everyone who has lied to the Feds. How many other people close to Trump have lied to the FBI and/or Congress? We’ve lost count. Donald Trump just sent them all to prison in the end, all so he could score the irrelevant “victory” of taking down a leaker.
