The Untouchable Trump

How the former president is defying gag orders, exploiting loopholes and escaping justice once again.

AP Photo/Seth Wenig, Pool

by Bob Cesca

WASHINGTON, DC – He keeps getting away with it. Donald Trump continues to exploit loopholes in the system to escape the law – a system he’s planning to tear down, ironically.

The United States is, as we’ve all discussed, a nation of laws. Between the U.S. Code and the Constitution, there are myriad guardrails against criminality, tyranny, and abuse of power, but so much of the cohesion of the republic is based on unwritten rules and traditions. One unwritten rule that’s been a point of discussion for years now is that we don’t typically prosecute ex-presidents. Trump, however, made it unavoidable. His crimes were so obvious and so egregious, there’s no way the system could move on without holding him accountable.

But even as he’s being tried in New York City for business fraud and election interference (again), he’s still the beneficiary of unearned latitude from Judge Juan Merchan. While Merchan has been fair and strict when he needed to be, it’s quite obvious that he’s holding back because Trump is who he is – or was who he was: a president. Like it or not.

From the outset, if Trump had been any other crooked businessman with a long track record of attacking his enemies publicly, Merchan might’ve issued an impenetrable gag order at the outset of the trial, covering all the bases. Instead, Merchan took baby steps and consequently had to expand his gag order only after Trump once again Kool-Aid-manned his way through the initial order. And he continues to violate it. We have yet to see whether his behavior has an impact on the verdict, but we shouldn’t have to wait for that. Anyone with internet access and a TV knows what he’s capable of, and he behaved exactly as we all expected, true to predictable form.

In the past week or two, he was threatened with jail and yet he’s still testing the integrity of the gag order. This time, he strong-armed his servile doormats from Congress to help him attack witnesses, the judge’s daughter, and the judge himself.

The gag order clearly mandates: “Making or directing others to make public statements about known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses concerning the potential participation in the investigation or in this criminal proceeding” are contempt violations punishable by fines or jail. 

“Directing others to make public statements” about the trial is exactly what Trump did this week. 

Shortly after I heard the news that Speaker Mike Johnson and senators J.D. Vance and Tommy Tuberville were in attendance at the trial, I suspected they were there to be Trump’s gag surrogates – public officials cloaked in the protection of Congress who would say the things Trump wanted to say about Stormy Daniels, Michael Cohen, Merchan’s daughter, and so forth.

Several hours later, my suspicions were confirmed.

First, Tuberville stupidly confessed (emphasis mine). 

“Hopefully we’ll have more and more senators and congressmen go up every day to represent him and be able to go out and overcome this gag order, and that’s one of the reasons we went — is to be able to speak our piece for President Trump.”

It’s admittedly not an airtight indication that Trump directed Tuberville to do this, but the gag order is surely why he did it.

Trump doesn’t deserve any benefit of the doubt. He’s done nothing to earn our latitude, especially when it comes to his fuckery and crimes. As a general rule, we should assume he’s guilty of whatever allegation is on the table, from diapers to insurrections, until we’re disabused of our fair assumptions by the introduction of contrary evidence. Some of you might even repel into the comments here to yell at me about being overly conspiratorial.

Oh, but wait.

Shortly after the Tuberville quote dropped, we got this:

New York Magazine journalist Andrew Rice said on MSNBC that on Monday he saw Donald Trump editing — as proceedings were ongoing during his hush money trial — what his Republican allies would later rant about on his behalf outside the courthouse.

Rice recalled: “I could actually look over Trump’s shoulder and see what he was reading, at one point he was actually reading the quotes that these individuals were … and going through and making notations with a pen on the paper.”

There it is. Trump obviously ordered the Speaker of the House and others, as though they’re his unpaid interns, to travel five hours from Washington to New York to be Trump’s Mouths of Sauron – to speak when he himself couldn’t.

Will Trump be charged with contempt again? I seriously doubt it. But he should be. His co-conspirators should also be charged. Once again, however, it’ll be too late. The damage is done. Trump will likely get away with it again due primarily to the traditions for which he otherwise disrespects.

While we’re here, it’s germane to note that given that he’s already been fined $10,000 for contempt, Trump’s bail should be revoked in the Washington, DC, Fulton, and Palm Beach trials since the terms of his bail forbid him from committing more crimes, which he’s clearly done – even before allegedly ordering his human shields to risk their own sets of contempt charges and legal fees. Were he anyone else, he’d be in jail in Fulton or whichever venue got to him first. But he’s Trump, so it’s not going to happen, much to our collective chagrin.

If my worst fears are true and Trump has ushered in an era when dictatorship is one election away, the system needs to be aggressively buttressed to prevent Trump or a copycat from repeating all the things, including the crimes on top of other crimes. Enough is enough.

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