REPORT:
TRUMP IS TERRIFIED ABOUT GOING TO PRISON AFTER LOSING THE ELECTION, AS HE
SHOULD BE
The president is said to be not only worried
about “existing investigations” but new federal probes into matters we don’t
even know about yet.
BY BESS LEVIN
NOVEMBER
2, 2020
In September 2019, Donald Trump’s lawyers debuted a bold new
legal argument. Attempting to quash a subpoena from the Manhattan District
Attorney’s office, which had requested eight years of tax returns to determine
if the Trump Organization has falsified business records relating to payouts
made to a porn star and a Playboy model, the president’s attorneys insisted
that such a request was unconstitutional because the founding fathers believed
sitting presidents should not be subject to the criminal process, which would
“distract the president” from his duties. Pressed by a judge
on this argument, and the hypothetical Trump busted out during the 2016
election—that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody”
and not “lose any voters”—attorney William Consovoy insisted
that yes, that kind of thing would fall under this concept of “presidential
immunity,” i.e. Trump could put a bullet in a random pedestrian and avoid
prosecution until moving out of the White House.
Unsurprisingly, actual legal experts weren’t
convinced of this argument and neither was the Supreme Court, which ruled last July, in
the words of Reuters, “that there are limits to the powers of the presidency
and stoutly reaffirmed the principle that not even the president is above the
law.” Still, Trump’s lackeys, which include the Attorney General of the United
States, have done their part to shield him from
situations wherein he could be convicted of a variety of crimes, getting him
through almost an entire term without an embarrassing situation wherein a
sitting president is, say, found guilty of falsifying business records
regarding a hush money payment he made to an adult-film star.
Unfortunately for Trump, if he loses the 2020
election, he’ll no longer be able to use the staff of the Justice Department as
his personal lawyers. That’s a worrisome thing for a guy who’s potentially
committed numerous crimes, and we know this because Trump is reportedly soiling
himself in fear over what he might be prosecuted for, and maybe go to jail
over, after he leaves office. Per the New York Times:
Seldom far
from Mr. Trump’s thoughts, however, is the possibility of defeat—and the
potential consequences of being ejected from the White House. In unguarded
moments, Mr. Trump has for weeks told advisers that he expects to face
intensifying scrutiny from prosecutors if he loses. He is concerned not only
about existing investigations in New York, but the potential for new federal
probes as well, according to people who have spoken with him.
As The New Yorker’s Jane
Mayer wrote in an article
published over the weekend, the world awaiting Trump when and if he loses the
election is a dark one, and not just because he’ll no longer have a
taxpayer-funded staff at his disposal to lie for him:
Given
that more than a dozen investigations and civil suits involving Trump are
currently under way, he could be looking at an endgame even more perilous than
the one confronted by Nixon. The Presidential historian Michael Beschloss said
of Trump, “If he loses, you have a situation that’s not dissimilar to that of
Nixon when he resigned. Nixon spoke of the cell door clanging shut.” Trump has
famously survived one impeachment, two divorces, six bankruptcies, twenty-six
accusations of sexual misconduct, and an estimated four thousand lawsuits. Few
people have evaded consequences more cunningly. That run of good luck may well
end, perhaps brutally, if he loses to Joe Biden. Even if Trump
wins, grave legal and financial threats will loom over his second term.
Two of
the investigations into Trump are being led by powerful state and city
law-enforcement officials in New York. Cyrus Vance, Jr., the
Manhattan District Attorney, and Letitia James, New York’s
attorney general, are independently pursuing potential criminal charges related
to Trump’s business practices before he became President. Because their
jurisdictions lie outside the federal realm, any indictments or convictions
resulting from their actions would be beyond the reach of a Presidential
pardon. Trump’s legal expenses alone are likely to be daunting. (By the
time Bill Clinton left the White House, he’d racked up more
than ten million dollars in legal fees.) And Trump’s finances are already under
growing strain. During the next four years, according to a stunning
recent Times report, Trump—whether reëlected or not—must meet payment
deadlines for more than three hundred million dollars in loans that he has
personally guaranteed; much of this debt is owed to such foreign creditors as
Deutsche Bank. Unless he can refinance with the lenders, he will be on the
hook.
“One of the reasons he’s so crazily intent on winning is all the
speculation that prosecutors will go after him,” author Barbara Res told
Mayer. “It would be a very scary spectre.”
Of course, when he’s not worrying about losing
to Biden (“Man, it’s going to be embarrassing if I lose to this guy,” he has
reportedly told advisers, according to the Times) and maybe going
to prison, Trump tells himself he’s going to win, as do his sycophantic advisers
who keep him in a protective bubble wherein he’ll be reelected in a landslide
and also be named People’s Sexiest Man Alive 2020. Per the Times:
The
president, his associates say, has drawn encouragement from his larger
audiences and from a stream of relatively upbeat polling information that
advisers have curated for him, typically filtering out the bleakest numbers. On
a trip to Florida last week, several aides told the president that winning the
Electoral College was a certainty, a prognosis not supported by Republican or
Democratic polling, according to people familiar with the conversation.
And Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, has
responded with chipper enthusiasm when Mr. Trump has raised the idea of making
a late bid for solidly Democratic states like New Mexico, an option other aides
have told the president is flatly unrealistic.
Most
people in the president’s inner circle share his optimism about the outcome of
the race, even as they fight exhaustion and the president’s whipsawing moods,
interviews with more than a dozen aides and allies showed. But some advisers
acknowledge that it would require several factors to fall into place. They
spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations.
Republican
lawmakers have offered less rosy assessments of his prospects, and in private
some Trump advisers do not argue the point. One high-ranking Republican member
of Congress vented to Mr. Meadows last month that if Mr. Trump “is trying to
lose the election I can’t think of anything I’d tell him to do differently,”
the lawmaker recalled, noting that the aide only nodded his head in
acknowledgment. “They just think they can’t do anything about it.”
Meanwhile, Trump hinted last month
about his plans should voters elect his opponent. “Could you imagine if
I lose?… I’m not going to feel so good. Maybe I’ll have to leave the country—I
don’t know.”