Editorials & Other Articles

marmar

(77,080 posts) Sat Sep 17, 2022, 09:56 AM Sep 2022

They have him surrounded: Trump now faces legal troubles in three states, plus D.C.

They have him surrounded: Trump now faces legal troubles in three states, plus D.C.
No one can promise Trump won't get away. But he's sweating — and he wakes up every day faced with huge legal bills

By LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV
Columnist
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 17, 2022 8:00AM

(Salon) If you just count the number of cellphones seized over the past few months from Trump cronies, you would have to conclude he's in deep doo-doo. Trump is known for eschewing emails and texts — and fuhgeddaboudit when it comes to putting his name on actual sheets of paper, unless they're executive orders banning Muslims and ripping immigrant children from the arms of their mothers.

Trump is a phone guy, and his favorite thing to do as president was to get on the phone and swap gossip and plot with his close associates. One of them was My Pillow Guy Mike Lindell, a frequent visitor to the Trump White House and a longtime supporter. Lindell's cellphone was seized by the FBI on Wednesday. Lindell appeared at Trump's Jan. 6, 2021, rally on the Ellipse and has been used regularly this year to warm up crowds at Trump rallies in Illinois, Florida, Arizona and other states. Lindell's phone was taken as part of a DOJ probe into the theft of voting data and voting machines in several states, including Michigan, Georgia and Colorado. Lindell published private voter data stolen from a voting machine in Colorado on his website, Frank Speech.

Another cellphone seized by the FBI as part of its criminal investigation into Trump belonged to former law school professor John Eastman, the author of the infamous memo planning the submission of slates of fake electors to Congress from battleground states lost by Trump. The FBI also took possession of the cellphone of Scott Perry, the Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who introduced Jeffrey Clark to Trump. Clark was an acting assistant attorney general whom Trump considered appointing to the top post as part of his plan to overturn the election results in Georgia. Just this week, the FBI took the cellphones of Boris Epshteyn, a former White House aide who now serves as an in-house counsel coordinating the handling of Trump's various legal woes, and Mike Roman, who was the Trump campaign's director of Election Day operations and is now an aide to the former president. Both Epshteyn and Roman are suspected of being part of the scheme to name fake electors from states Trump lost in 2020.

....(snip)....

It is not known which of the two Washington grand juries issued the subpoenas concerning the Trump super PAC, but sources told the AP that some of the subpoenas and search warrants issued recently sought information about Trump's fund-raising activities.

So in Washington alone Trump is under investigation for the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, for his mishandling of classified and other government records, for his involvement in the fake elector scheme and for his fund-raising with the Save America PAC.

....(snip)....

As for Trump himself, well, your guess is as good as mine. But right now, he's looking a lot like Custer at Little Bighorn – surrounded on all sides with no way out. He's been there before when he faced two impeachments, but many of the people who defended him then, including his former White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, have already testified before grand juries investigating Trump and cannot be counted on to have his back this time. ...........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/09/17/they-have-him-surrounded-now-faces-legal-troubles-in-three-states-plus-dc/