Oh dear lord. There’s now someone in the Donald Trump scandal named Ronald Rotunda

| 12:07 am EDT July 23, 2017
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If the Donald Trump scandal were going to find a way to get even stranger, it would need a truly novel way to top itself. The names alone sound like they’re straight out of central casting. That’s right, the universe may have finally found a way to top the absurdity a woman named Reality Winner leaking dirt about reality show host Donald Trump. Ladies and gentlemen, say hello to our newest character, Ronald Rotunda. That’s right, Ronald Rotunda.

Mr. Rotunda suddenly found his name involved with the Donald Trump scandal today by virtue of a legal memo he wrote nearly twenty years ago, in which he argued that a sitting president can be indicted for his crimes. At the time he was arguing that Bill Clinton could be indicted for obstruction of justice. But for some reason his argument remained locked away all these years, and has just now been unearthed by the New York Times (link). His old memo now directly applies to Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Donald Trump. Welcome to the show.

To be clear, we’re not making fun of Ronald Rotunda, who is a distinguished legal scholar and is currently the “Professor and Doy and Dee Henley Chair and Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence” at Chapman University (link), which means he’s smarter than any of us are. And his only involvement in the Donald Trump scandal is that he wrote a memo decades ago that he had no idea would ever become relevant in the Trump saga.

It’s just that his name is so fitting. We’re in an environment where Donald Trump seems to prefer hiring people (Sean Spicer, Hope Hicks, Mick Mulvaney, Mad-dog Mattis, Alexander Acosta, Kellyanne Conway, Sarah Sanders) whose first and last name start with the same sound. When it comes to the people who may take Trump down, we have Reality Winner and now Ronald Rotunda. This can’t get any weirder. And yet it will.