45th, Without the Presidency’s Protections,
Struggles for a Strategy
An errant court filing by his lawyers offers insight into the confusion and uncertainty the investigation has exposed inside 45th's camp
"An errant court filing"! HAHAHAHAHA! Clowns R Us! What did they do now?! (This is written by Haberman, Glenn Thrush, and Alan Feuer.)
On Tuesday, a Florida judge informed two lawyers representing former President Donald J. Trump, neither of them licensed in the state, 😂 that they had bungled routine paperwork to take part in a suit filed following the F.B.I.’s search this month of Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and private club.
“A sample motion can be found on the Court’s website,” the judge instructed them in her order.
"A SAMPLE MOTION CAN BE FOUND ON THE COURT'S WEBSITE"! That's what judges do for pro se defendants! HAHAHAHA!
45th has projected his usual bravado, and raised millions of dollars online from outraged supporters, since federal agents descended on the property more than two weeks ago and carted off boxloads of material including highly classified documents. But something is different this time — and the errant court filing offered a glimpse into the confusion and uncertainty the investigation has exposed inside 45th’s camp.
The documents investigation represents the greatest legal threat 45th has faced in years, and he is going into the battle shorn of the
protective infrastructure and constitutional armor of the presidency.
After years of burning through lawyers, he has struggled to hire new
ones, and has a small group of lawyers of varying experience.
He is facing a Justice Department he no longer controls, run by a by-the-book attorney general, Merrick B. Garland, who has pursued various investigations into 45th methodically and quietly.
I 💓 Merrick Garland
45th is serving as his own communications director and strategic adviser, seeking tactical political and in-the-moment public relations victories, sometimes at the risk of stumbling into substantive legal missteps.
One example came late on Monday, when a conservative writer allied with 45th made public a letter that the National Archives had sent to 45th’s legal team in May. Spun by 45th and his allies as evidence that President Biden had played a role in the case after saying he was not involved, the letter confirmed information damaging to the former president’s case, including that 45th had retained more than 700 pages of documents with classification markings, including some at the most restricted level.
Nothin' in the legal biz like a confession.
Then, hours after informing 45th's lawyers on Tuesday about one
basic mistake they had made, the judge handling their request for the
appointment of a special master to review the documents seized from
Mar-a-Lago came back with some pointed questions. Judge Aileen M.
Cannon, who was appointed by 45th, asked the team to respond by
Friday about whether she even had jurisdiction to hear Mr. Trump’s
request, and what precisely his motion was asking her to do.
Judge Cannon: "Clowns, are you even in the right courthouse? Are any of you licensed to malpractice law in Florida? What does this motion ask me to do? 'A sample motion can be found on the Court’s website.' Good day to you."
But as has become standard operating practice in 45th's world, the primary focus there is not about legal claims, or even political ones, but the state of mind of the man at the center of the crisis. He feels other people’s actions toward him haven’t gotten enough attention, some of his advisers say privately, regardless of whether the facts actually bear out his grievances.
That is very insightful. Maggie, you get 1/3rd credit.
...
Now, as in the days after he lost the 2020 election, Mr. Trump is relying on an ad hoc team of advisers with varying levels of experience and judgment, and trying to use his political support as both a shield and a weapon to be aimed at the people investigating him.
45th is to some extent walking on the phantom limbs [I feel the hidden hand of Alan Feuer in those phantom limbs :)] of his expired presidency, claiming executive privilege still applies to him even though he’s out of office and maintaining he had a sweeping, standing order to declassify some documents, which his aides have declined to produce.
If the investigation into Mr. Trump’s possible connection with Russia was convoluted or hard for Americans to grasp, this one is not. The documents inquiry is about boxes of papers, storerooms, souvenirs and “top secret” stamps — the kind of identifiable items that Mr. Trump has weaponized to bludgeon opponents...
Nothin' easier to prove, or more difficult to defend, than what we call "a paper case."
...And despite the bravura, 45th has betrayed anxiety in private conversations about where this is all leading, people who have spoken to him say.
...
45th's court filing on Monday requesting the special master to review the seized documents was styled as a legal motion, but it sounded more like a news release drafted by 45th himself.
HAHAHAHA!
It was filled with bombastic complaints that the government had long treated 45th unfairly. The document cited purported examples like “two years of noisy ‘Russian collusion’ investigations.” It also contained 45thian boasts about the former president being “the clear front-runner” for the 2024 election.
Thus Judge Cannon, "What are you asking me to do?" HAHAHAHA!
...
In one respect, 45th and his current roster of lawyers are fundamentally in lock step. They maintain, without any apparent evidence, that the Justice Department and F.B.I. used the document search at Mar-a-Lago to uncover new information for the widening investigation into his actions leading up to Jan. 6, 2021...😂SUCH a good legal strategy, 45th/Clowns. Please do keep same up!
And they maintain, without proof, that Mr. Biden himself has been ordering up all of the investigations to destroy his political opponent, according to three people close to Mr. Trump.
The result, according to people who have worked for him over the years, is that the only real continuity in the defense is 45th himself, and his demands that his lawyers do what he wants, which is why so many of his legal filings sound as if they were dictated by him.
It is possible that 45th is the only one who knows what material he took with him from the White House. His concentric circles of political advisers...are...shrinking. 45th is thinly staffed as he sits at his private club at Bedminster, N.J., or at Trump Tower in New York City for the summer, and sometimes makes decisions without keeping his close advisers in the know.
To that point, few of 45th’s advisers appeared to have been aware that Mr. Solomon was publicizing the letter that the archives had sent to Evan Corcoran, one of 45th’s lawyers. Many of them acknowledged that they had learned of it when reporters began reaching out after Mr. Solomon made it public.😂
...
“So much of the ‘ready, fire, aim’ comes when he’s sitting alone.”
And that is how it ends. I want to know who wrote the lion's share of that article. Me thinks it was not Ms. Haberman.
