Rebecca Ballhaus, Alex Leary and Corrine Ramey, writing for the Wall Street Journal, reported that “as criminal probes advance on several fronts, the former president is employing his familiar scattershot tactics to meet the start of a potentially more precarious legal chapter…To counter those probes, Trump is relying on a scattered team of lawyers and advisers with little sign of a coordinated strategy beyond attacking investigators, seeking to delay proceedings and casting himself as the victim of a witch hunt, according to current and former aides and legal advisers. His legal team, much as it was for the duration of his presidency, has been plagued by infighting and has suffered frequent turnover due to clashes over personality and legal strategy. Trump’s lawyers have questioned each other’s tactics and competence behind the scenes and have urged contradictory approaches.”
The lawyers representing him in different probes around the country have been in little contact, people familiar with the matter say. Trump has long encouraged infighting among his attorneys by playing them against each other, at times calling advisers to ask what they think of his legal team’s performance and calling other lawyers to ask them to join or replace members of his team.
What Trump is missing, said former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb, is an attorney who would serve as a leader for the lawyers working on disparate investigations. “He plays his own captain, and legally that is suicidal,” Cobb said. “His strategy, to the extent there is one, appears totally reactive.”
Trump has often proved a difficult client over the years, which Cobb, who left the Trump White House on good terms, said would be an obstacle to finding a lawyer to take on such a leadership role. “Nobody considering assisting the former president at this stage of the game can be unmindful of the extraordinary speed with which Trump turns lawyers into witnesses,” he added.
…Trump’s team sees the compounding investigations as more of a political issue than a legal one, advisers say. His lawyers view the probes as challenging to manage amid a presidential campaign, but appear less concerned about the legal ramifications for Trump. If convicted in the Manhattan case, he would be unlikely to face prison time. Potential penalties in the other investigations are less clear.
His allies see potential political upside from an indictment, which they hope would rally Republicans around the former president. Trump has sent a flurry of fundraising emails in recent days casting himself as a beleaguered warrior for his supporters. “They only want to lock me up because I’m the one thing standing between them and YOU,” one recent solicitation read.
On social media, Trump has mounted an escalating series of attacks on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, which some legal experts say could come back to hurt him if he were to face a trial. In a post just after 1 a.m. on Friday, he called Bragg a “degenerate psychopath” whose actions could bring “potential death & destruction”; a day earlier, he posted a photo of himself with a baseball bat beside a photo of Bragg’s head.
…“He believes the best defense is an offense,” said longtime ally Roger Stone. “As far as the trail ahead, he’s fatalistic: I’ll fight each challenge one by one and I’ll win.”
Trump has expressed mixed views in private conversations on a potential indictment. He is unsettled by the idea of being indicted, people close to him said. But he has also told advisers he is pleased that the controversy has put him squarely back in the spotlight, which he believes has let him overshadow other Republicans in the presidential race
Trump on Saturday night appeared before thousands of supporters at a rally in Waco, Texas, where he lashed out at investigators and cast himself as a victim. The “weaponization” of the justice system, he said, is “the central issue of our time.”
While an indictment could boost Trump in the Republican primary, it could further alienate swing voters turned off by the barrage of controversies. Trump shed moderate GOP voters and independents in his 2020 loss to President Biden. Republican angst intensified following the November midterm elections when a number of high-profile Trump-backed candidates lost after echoing his false assertions about election fraud.
…Trump’s political-action committee, Save America, paid more than $16 million in legal consulting fees in 2021 and 2022, more than half of which went to firms linked to the lawyers representing him in various investigations, Federal Election Commission records show. It is legally murky whether the PAC will be able to continue paying for Trump’s legal fees now that he is officially running for president.
…The Trump operation, which in some previous inquiries has relied on congressional Republicans to battle in its defense, has done less to coordinate strategy with the Hill this time, even as a group of House Republicans have argued that Bragg is abusing his authority, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Some Trump lawyers have reached out to the House Judiciary Committee to check in, but there has been little discussion of strategy with the panel, the person said. The committee’s chairman, Jim Jordan (R-OH), is among the Republicans who have sought Bragg’s testimony about his investigation, a move the DA’s office called “an unlawful incursion into New York’s sovereignty.”
In recent years, Republicans have often criticized— both publicly and privately— the lawyers Trump has chosen to represent him. Several of Trump’s lawyers, including Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, have come under investigation themselves. Both have denied wrongdoing.
…On Saturday night in Texas, Mr. Trump declared, “From the beginning it’s been one witch hunt and phony investigation after another.”
Meanwhile, the New York Post editorial board lambasted him mercilessly. “As some of his allies are trying to rewrite January 6 as an afternoon stroll,” they wrote, “Donald Trump is having none of it. In the face of a possible criminal case in New York, he screamed that “death and destruction” would follow any indictment. He posed with a baseball bat aimed at the head of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. THIS is Donald Trump. He hasn’t changed in the slightest. There is no shame. After riling up rioters, cheering for a coup, and agreeing that his vice president needed to be hanged, he’s back to making violent threats against fellow Americans.
Rather than seek his vindication in the courtroom, or even just make an impassioned speech, Trump wants to inspire a mob.
Time and time again, Trump’s responses have been unhinged, indicative, and self-defeating.
And don’t buy for a second when he says he’s “fighting for you.”
If you actually “rose up” and were arrested, Trump would abandon you, just as he has every ally who wasn’t useful to him anymore.
What did he do for those locked up for months over Jan. 6?
What cash did he hand over for the candidates he endorsed in the recent midterm elections he torpedoed for Republicans?
Ever given Trump money?
If you stop, and even if you don’t, the angry pleas come fast and furious.
Don’t you care!?
How could you abandon him?
We understand voters who rallied to his cause because he vows to fight for them.
There is much wrong with the country.
And yes, it will take someone strong to wade through the thicket of Establishment opposition to change.
But Trump is not trying to make America a better place.
He’s not offering anyone apart from himself a better future.
He’s out for revenge.
This is how Trump has been spending his time since announcing his run for president.
Stewing in Mar-a-Lago.
No grievance is too small.
When he found out that Rihanna once criticized him, he took to Truth Social— multiple times!— to bellow how bad her Super Bowl halftime show was.
He once posted a screed, at 5 o’clock in the morning, about MSNBC’s programming decisions.
When Trump ran in 2016, he was an unknown entity.
Independents took a chance, wanting to break from the stagnant political machines that sought to anoint Hillary Clinton.
But he’s not a mystery anymore.
Americans know that Trump can’t stop himself from nursing piddling grudges and throwing out childish insults.
The emperor has no clothes.
Perhaps you don’t mind.
But there are plenty of middle-of-the-road voters who do.
They saw this behavior in 2020 and the 2022 midterms and said we need less anger and more hope.
Less rage and more rational action to fix the problems facing our nation.
You want a leader who will fight for you?
Then you have to pick someone who can actually get elected.
Republicans can’t throw away their shot in 2024.
Is Chris Christie that shot? The former New Jersey governor is living in a delusion in which he is the Trump-destroyer. He says he can do to Trump what he did to Lil’ Marco in 2016. Christie huddled with his former campaign operatives in New Hampshire last night. He told them that “You have to be fearless, because he will come back— and right at you. And that means you need to think about who’s got the skill to do that, and who’s got the guts to do that, because it’s not going to end nicely… “Trump said a few weeks ago: I am your retribution. Guess what everybody? No thanks. The only person he cares about is him. And if we haven’t learned that since Election Day 2020 until today, we’re not paying attention.”
Discussing DeSantis, Pence, Haley, Pompeo and the other not-Trump candidates, he said “They’re going to wriggle right up next to him and say ‘I’m almost like him, but I’m not quite as bad.’ Let me tell you something, everybody. That’s going to lose as certain as he lost in ‘20, as we lost the House in ‘18, as we lost the Senate in ‘21, as we underperformed in ‘22.”
Reporting on his speech in New Hampshire before that private dinner, Trip Gabriel wrote that Christie has no campaign in waiting. He has barbs to hurl at Trump— Republicans have been dragged into “a sinkhole of anger and retribution” by Trump— but no campaign and, perhaps, no viable lane. I asked my Twitter followers if they think Christie is a viable candidate. They don’t.
As for Trump, yesterday Sahil Kapur and Scott Wong reported that some of the top Senate Republicans— John Cornyn, John Thune, Thom Tillis and Lindsey Graham— were uncomfortable with Trump harping on the J-6 insurrection at his Waco rally over the weekend. Two Neo-Nazis, Ron Johnson and insurrectionist plotter Tommy Tuberville, defended Trump.
