Sorry, Donald, you’re all out of them
Donald Trump loves to take people to court, but today he lost a court ruling that could end up being looked back on as the definitive legal ruling in his downfall. A federal judge ruled that the House impeachment inquiry is fully legal, and that all of Trump’s arguments for defying the investigation are invalid. So how did Trump respond to the news?
After the ruling, Donald Trump initially tweeted some kind of weird complaint directed at Apple CEO Tim Cook about the disappearance of the home button from the iPhone, suggesting that either Trump hadn’t gotten the news yet, or the news of the ruling caused his brain to completely malfunction. But after that Trump recovered his focus, relatively speaking, and asserted that “my lawyers” should take legal action against House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff.
The trouble for Trump is that he doesn’t appear to have any lawyers left. His previous personal attorney Michael Cohen is in prison. His current personal attorney Rudy Giuliani is on the verge of arrest. Trump previously asserted that Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman were part of his legal team, and they’ve since been arrested. Trump briefly hired Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing as his attorneys, but now they’re reportedly under investigation for their alleged roles in the Ukraine scandal as well. Trump tried to hire Trey Gowdy as his lawyer, and that lasted like an hour. That leaves Jay Sekulow, whose career highlight was a meltdown on Fox News that was so incoherent, host Chris Wallace simply responded “Oh boy, this is weird.”
Sorry, Donald Trump, you’re all out of lawyers. Even your White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, who isn’t actually your lawyer, appears to be flaming out in real time. After all, it was Cipollone’s gibberish that got emphatically rejected in court today.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report