The real reason Donald Trump sat on the abuse claims against Eric Schneiderman for five years
This week saw the resignation of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman after four women accused him of physical abuse. This is coming at a crucial time in the Trump-Russia scandal, as Schneiderman had been leading the New York State investigation into Trump’s various crimes, in parallel with the federal investigation led by Robert Mueller. Now it turns out Donald Trump has known about the accusations against Schneiderman for the past five years. The question is why he didn’t use it to get rid of Schneiderman sooner – and it may simply come down to strategy.
When two of Schneiderman’s alleged victims hired the same attorney in 2013, that attorney inexplicably decided to tell Donald Trump’s fixer Michael Cohen about the accusations, according to the New York Times. This does not cast any doubt on the legitimacy of the accusations being made by the women in question. They’ve chosen to come forward now, after having remained silent for five years, and that’s their prerogative. And there is no evidence that Trump played any role in their decision to come forward. But Trump did know about the accusations. The question here is why Trump didn’t preemptively make these accusations public when he was doing battle with Schneiderman prior to the election.
Trump could have leaked the accusations against Schneiderman to the media, and likely caused Schneiderman’s demise at any time. So why didn’t he do it? The key here is that, while Trump and Schneiderman have been facing off over legal matters in New York for several years, they’ve always been the kinds of infractions that could be fixed by paying a fine: Trump University, the Trump Foundation, etc. That’s now changing, with New York State building criminal cases against several Trump associates (and presumably against Trump himself) as insurance policies in case Trump figures out how to sabotage the federal investigation.
The most likely explanation is that Donald Trump sat on the accusations against Eric Schneiderman all these years, because he was saving it for when he knew he’d eventually need to fend off criminal charges in New York. Remarkably, would mean that Trump has known since at least 2013 that he’d eventually end up on trial for criminal charges. This was long before he entered the race for president.
