Make no mistake, Donald Trump’s attack today on Sidney Powell is good for us and bad for Trump
Donald Trump finally got around to attacking Sidney Powell today, a full 48 hours after she cut a cooperating plea deal against him in Fulton County. Even though Trump’s whiny rant about Powell makes clear that Trump knows he’s screwed and can’t do a thing about it, there’s been the usual hand wringing about how it means Trump is “getting away with it all.”
So let’s be clear here. Trump’s attack today on Sidney Powell is bad – for Trump. It’s a clear cut case of witness tampering. And you don’t need a gag order for it to be witness tampering. So it’s irrelevant if there’s no gag order in Fulton County, or if there’s a temporary stay on a gag order elsewhere. None of that matters.
Fani Willis and Jack Smith can both charge Trump with witness tampering against Powell, if they feel that Trump’s post today is realistically enough to convince a trial jury to convict Trump on witness tampering. These prosecutors will have to make these decisions, and if you trust them overall, then you have to trust that they’ll make the most appropriate decision here.
And no matter how much fretting you might see about it on social media, Trump doesn’t gain anything by doing this. It’s not going to intimidate Powell out of testifying against him (she’s already made her decision can’t back out of it even if she wanted to). It’s not going to keep the courts from being able to seat an impartial jury (we’re talking about finding twelve people who don’t follow politics out of a jury pool of thousands). Of all the doomsday hype you’re going to hear about how Trump’s attacks on Powell are supposedly going to help Trump or cause unspecified “damage,” none of it’s real. None of it can actually benefit Trump.
If this were a sports game, this would be the point late in the game where Trump is losing so hopelessly, he’s committing personal fouls out of frustration – which only ensures that he’ll lose in even uglier fashion than he otherwise would have. So if Trump wants to keep digging this hole, so be it. This is all going very, very poorly for him.
