Alan Zendell, July 28, 2023

After being informed that Donald Trump was a target in the January 6th investigation by the Justice Department, his new lawyers asked for a meeting with DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith. Trump had just shaken up his legal team again, as another group of prominent attorneys threw in the towel. So much about the ongoing investigations and indictments of former President Trump is unprecedented, it’s impossible to predict an outcome, and the situation is as serious as it can be.

What is at stake is the viability of our Constitution, the rule of law, and the survival of our democracy. All of our American ideals and values are on trial, along with the myths we grew up believing about America. That last item may turn out to be most critical – if as a nation we lose faith in the ideas that define our identity as Americans, we will become the latest addition to the scrapheap of failed empires and civilizations.

Mr. Trump believes, as he has demonstrated throughout his life, that lies, obfuscation, and the use of every possible legal stratagem to delay judgment are his most effective means of defense. It’s not a coincidence that those are the same tactics used by every major gangster and organized crime figure since Prohibition and the Great Depression made crime, racketeering, and black marketing a national pastime. It’s also worth noting that these tactics allowed mobsters to evade the law for decades, but in the end, most of them wound up spending the rest of their lives in federal prisons.

The comparison doesn’t end there. Many of America’s organized crime figures attained a Robin Hood-like status as folk heroes. When times are tough and millions of people are hurting, it’s human nature that many will cheer anyone who seems able to beat the system, ignore the rules, and thumb their nose at established authority. When a politician does it, it’s called populism, standing up for the little guys who are being crushed by the system or falling through the cracks. Whatever it’s called, it invariably results in divisiveness and the re-opening of old wounds around racism, wealth, and social status.

All of that is on display today, and because Trump is a former president who has taken control of one of our major parties, everything is magnified, including the cult-like status of his MAGA movement. People who understand what Trump is and recognize the danger he poses to our future shake their heads in dismay, seeing that as much as a third of the country seems unmoved by the obvious facts that demonstrate Trump’s sociopathic nature. That’s why the stakes are as high as they’ve ever been for our future.

Like the master criminals who preceded him, Trump has finally been tripped up in his own web of lies and unlawful behavior. Since the prosecution of Donald Trump, who never admits guilt or compromises, will almost certainly result in the most important criminal trials in our nation’s history, the meeting between Trump’s attorneys and Jack Smith had everyone’s attention. We might have expected the best, brightest, and most ambitious defense attorneys to line up around the block, eager for a chance to take part.

But the revolving door of attorneys who preceded them found Trump to be an incorrigible client who ignored their advice and continually undermined their efforts to defend him. Over the past thirty months, they have lost virtually every legal battle they fought, and the evidence against their client continued to mount. We saw the result yesterday, when, instead of discussing the facts and merits of the government’s January 6th case, the best argument Trump’s new attorneys could make was that it would be bad for the country if Trump were indicted.

I absolutely agree. The spectacle of a former president behaving like an organized crime boss is not something I want broadcast around the world. The only thing worse would be letting Trump get away with his crimes. If he is able to avoid or delay prosecution until after the 2024 election and win re-election, we will all bear witness to the full measure of his narcissistic sociopathy. He will believe he is untouchable, and given what we know about his supporters’ plans to weaken the government and transfer more power to the presidency, that could spell the end of everything we hold dear.

The media wonder if voters suffer from fatigue over all of Trump’s legal issues, and whether they will simply ignore them. A lot of people tell me they’re sick of all this, and they do their best to tune it out, but I’m betting that’s just a metaphor for being sick of Trump. When they step into the voting booth, it will mark the end of his political career (assuming he’s on the ballot.)