A Maze in the Mind of a Desperate Man
Jim and Charlie discuss the new wave of Trump charges
Jim: Well, Charlie, here we go again. Another week and another indictment for former President Donald Trump. The indictments are piling up like tickets to a movie about a maze in the mind of the man desperate to fool America. The latest charges filed by Fani Willis, the Fulton County District Attorney in Georgia, involve Trump and the gang that couldn’t shoot straight – his lawyers, including former New York mayor Rudi Giuliani. The sweeping indictment involves a racketeering law created to deal with criminal organizations like the mafia and represents the fourth time Trump has been charged. Legally the charges imperil the freedom of the former President. In the court of public opinion, though, each indictment seems to bolster his approval ratings.
photo by Oleg Hasanov
In addition to a New York case involving Trump’s alleged hush money payments to a porn star, the other indictments handed up by grand jury’s charge Trump with illegally keeping classified documents from his time as President and violating the Constitution by scheming to win an election he lost. The cases assembled by Jack Smith, the special prosecutor leading the Trump investigations, are strong and meticulously lay out a plot that is a stain on democracy regardless of its outcome.
Yet, I’ve always thought the charges that Willis leveled against Trump this week represent the case that could spell doom for the presumed GOP White House nominee in the coming election. There’s a lot of speculation in the chattering class on TV about prosecutorial overreach and the political fallout from charges by Willis, a Democrat. But the latest indictment really comes down to her easily understood charges that team Trump clumsily tried to pressure Brad Raffensberger, the Georgia Secretary of State, to “find” 11,780 votes, or one more than he needed to falsely say he won the last presidential election in Georgia.
Raffenberger rejected threats from Trump. President Biden won the state. Among the piles of damning evidence Willis amassed is the widely publicized tape recording of the phone call in which Trump, acting like a character from the Soprano’s, tried to strong-arm Raffensberger to illegally change the legitimate vote. Pretty strong stuff.
Since most of these charges involve allegations of conspiracy, prosecutors must prove Trump knew he was doing something wrong, a factor that will force them to delve into Trump’s state of mind when he was trying to hang on to his presidency. What a maze that will be. If defense attorneys can convince one single juror that this guy really believed he won, Trump could walk. Another big question: Will a trial occur before or after the election? What do you think, Charlie?
Charlie: It used to be that politicians were described as covered in Teflon when criminal charges wouldn’t stick to them. They were thought to be invincible. Trump isn’t like that. He is like Velcro. Toss something at him and it sticks. He is obviously a huge target, in size and behavior, so lots of stuff is sticking. He hasn’t been convicted of anything as yet, although his New York business record sounds like something that would appear on an episode of Billions. But that’s not what’s interesting to me.
If you don’t know by now that this man is a criminal, you are living under a paving stone that has no Wi-Fi connection. What interests me is everything that happens to him stimulates his followers to hop up and toss more money into his campaign fund. Just check. The more the civilized world says he is a twisted felon, the more his blind followers say, “But we love him!” and toss some more money at him, like he needs it. It’s the “blind follower” part that is ultimately going to be so expensive for the Republicans. Once that sinks in, his pool of supporters is likely to shrink. In fact, it already has! I read the other day that two prominent right wing-ish academics wrote an article that says he should not return to the White House. You might think, “Whoopee!” But the problem with the article is that it won’t be published in the University of Pennsylvania law review for a month.
We all know they aren’t the only conservatives to back away, but they don’t outweigh the blind followers. On the trials, my assumption, after covering court stuff for a long time, is that prosecutors don’t deliver indictments if they aren’t ready for trial. It’s interesting to think they would withhold a Trump trial just because they don’t want to interfere with the political process, but the prosecutor who gets a jury to convict Trump will win an important place in history. What politician (and they are all politicians) can resist that?
Talking about Trump’s “state of mind” in a criminal trial would be a challenge no one could meet. Like a child’s, I am certain his mind changes the minute a distraction comes into view, like someone who can’t resist the twinkling lights in a casino. Saying where that mind was months or years ago, I don’t think you can sell that because there’s no logic to it. What prosecutors have beyond state of mind is what he did do, and there’s plenty of evidence to back that up.
Jim: I don’t know, Charlie. When I covered the courts, I once sat through a trial involving charges that a convicted felon was guilty of owning a gun, a violation of federal law. The felon said his pregnant wife owned the gun, not him, and she used it for target practice. The gun, a huge .357 Magnum pistol, looked like it could knock down a barn with a single shot. A jury bought his story and found him innocent. I’ll never forget seeing one juror walk by the felon in the courtroom and pat him on the shoulder. From then on, I decided never to try and predict what a jury would do.
Any sane person scrutinizing the cases against Trump should find him guilty. The evidence is solid. To my mind, he clearly tried to subvert American democracy so he could retain his privileged perch in the White House, one of the most serious charges against him. Given the evidence, either Willis or Smith probably will claim his scalp, although I don’t know what they will do with it. Trump is a highly skilled politician and entertainer, though, and no one should underestimate him. If Democrats can’t rally around President Biden, we could see Trump’s solid and faithful base in the GOP elect a president who is a convicted criminal. These charges are bound to end up presenting the Supreme Court with some knotty legal issues. Since Willis’s indictment involves state and not federal charges, he would be unable to pardon himself, and any trial might be televised, giving us and Trump the trial of the century, which could be just what he wants.
Charlie: Indeed. He never should have been elected in the first place. I remember sitting with a collection of Roosevelt University students who were getting ready to celebrate Hillary Clinton’s victory. I have never seen the air go out of a bunch of college kids so quickly. Those of us who were old enough headed to the nearest bar, where the questions “How” and “Why” resounded far into the night. It didn’t take long for the man to wreck everything he touched. What is left of normal media (not Fox News) should be reminding people of that over and over, along with the fact he thought bleach injections would stop covid. He’s bad. He’s an idiot, and if media doesn’t point that out over and over and falls back into its favored space (“On the one hand, he is a lying cheat, but on the other hand he is right about Big Macs!”) it will carry the blame if that awful man is reelected on his way to a state or federal pen someplace.
—James O’Shea and Charles Madigan
James O’Shea is a longtime Chicago author and journalist who now lives in North Carolina. He is the author of several books and is the former editor of the Los Angeles Times and managing editor of the Chicago Tribune.
Charles Madigan is a writer and veteran foreign and national correspondent for UPI and the Chicago Tribune, where he also served as a senior writer and editor. He examines news reporting, politics and world events.
Read, listen, and follow on Substack: