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Kafka Would Blush
Trump’s latest legal gambit is the height of absurdity and contempt for the law — even for him.
Hey, hive mind: is there an app for keeping track of Trump’s various criminal and civil trials? (Ideally one that does not require me to update my operating system.) Between the Mar-a-Lago documents case in south Florida; the January 6thcase in Washington DC; the RICO case in Fulton Country, Georgia; the affair-with-the-porn star/hush money case in New York City; the Trump Organization tax fraud case also in New York; and the second E. Jean Carroll defamation and sexual assault case (in which a judge ruled against Trump for a second time just today), I’m having trouble keeping up.
It’s on my mind, because this week the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus reported on Trump’s latest legal maneuver in the most serious of those cases (though not necessarily the one that puts him in the most legal jeopardy), the January 6th prosecution brought by special counsel Jack Smith. She writes:
Any day now, Donald Trump’s lawyers are poised to unveil the former president’s shoot-the-moon defense against election-related charges: that Trump possesses absolute immunity from prosecution for what they claim are his official actions as president.
That, of course, has long been Trump’s first and last line of defense: “I am king.” But in order to present that argument…