Donald Trump’s double nightmare is upon us
Imagine you’re going on criminal trial today on thirty-four felony charges, with everyone from your former lawyer to your former lover testifying against you. That would be pretty devastating, right? Now imagine that while you’re on criminal trial today, another hearing down the hall is being held to determine whether all your assets can be seized. It doesn’t even sound real.
Yet this is precisely the situation that Donald Trump finds himself in today. To say things are closing in on him from all sides would be to put it mildly. He’s in such a bad position, he’s not even allowed to be in the courtroom where his financial destruction is being decided, because he’s stuck in the courtroom where his freedom is being decided. Not that Trump knows where he’s at half the time anyway, of course.
I won’t try to put odds on whether Judge Engoron rejects Trump’s bond posting, because the devil is in the details in these kinds of situations – and while the bond seems highly sketchy, we don’t have access to all the details. Letitia James clearly thinks it should be rejected. We’ll just have to trust that Engoron makes the legally appropriate decision based on all the information available to him. It could go either way.
Trump is far less likely to find any degree of success down the hall today in his criminal trial. The prosecution’s opening statement will lay out a comprehensive roadmap of how witness after witness, backed by evidence upon evidence, is going to prove Trump’s guilt beyond any possible shadow of a doubt. And then Trump’s defense attorneys are going to be forced to put on an opening statement that consists of the kind of ineffective gibberish Trump wants to hear. Once it all finishes falling flat, Trump will be in a sour mood and fuming at his attorneys, even though they’ll have done precisely the dumb thing that he ordered them to do.
Suffice it to say that today will be interesting for us watching at home, but an absolute double nightmare for Donald Trump. But today is just the beginning. Trump has a hearing tomorrow to determine his punishment for violating his gag order. Then later this week the courts will hold a hearing that will determine when Trump’s next criminal trial gets to start. Trump’s multifaceted nightmare is still just beginning.
