Donald Trump’s confession memo means he’s even further gone than we thought

| 1:02 pm EDT June 3, 2018
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Give yourself some credit today if you predicted that, as Donald Trump was being cornered for his crimes, he would resort to the last ditch tactic of confessing to his crimes and trying to argue that he should be allowed to get away with them anyway. It turns out you were ahead of your time, because we’re now learning that Trump resorted to this tactic five months ago.

Back in January, Donald Trump and his lawyers – some of whom are now his former lawyers – decided that Trump’s best move was to privately confess to Robert Mueller that he did indeed commit felony obstruction of justice, while arguing that it’s legal for a sitting president to do so. In a surreal twist, they did so in writing, in the form of a “confidential” memo. Trump admitted that he dictated his son Donald Trump Jr’s response to getting caught having met with the Russians at Trump Tower.

Weirdly, some of Trump’s lawyers continued to argue publicly on cable news that Donald Trump did not dictate the response, even after Trump had confessed to it privately. So where did this strategy get Trump and his legal team? Well, two of his lawyers – John Dowd and Ty Cobb – have since become unemployed, which gives you a sense of how well the memo strategy went over.

Of course we all know that Donald Trump is the one in charge of his legal defense strategy, and that any lawyers on his team are really just there to co-sign his decisions and collect their paychecks. So it was Trump who decided back in January that confessing to Robert Mueller in writing was his best bet for convincing Mueller to back off. It’s the kind of thing you try when you think all else has failed, you’re going down anyway, and you have nothing left to lose. Notably, Trump reached this frame of mind five months ago.