Another Domino Falls for Trump. But Are We Any Closer To Seeing Trump Himself Charged?
With the arrest yesterday of Thomas Barrack, one of Trump’s closest political advisers (who was also the former head of his Presidential Inaugural Committee), another key Trump insider is now a potential threat to the former president. Federal prosecutors charged Barrack with seven counts including unlawful lobbying, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to investigators.
Barrack apparently made himself voluntarily available to investigators from the outset, but that may have been a mistake. During interviews, Barrack allegedly made false statements about facilitating communications between the White House and the United Arab Emirates, a country for which Barrack is accused of acting as a foreign agent. Specifically, Barrack is charged with using his close connection to Trump to gain access for his UAE pals, broker huge arms deals, and secure big foreign policy wins.
Although Barrack has pleaded not guilty, the legal pressure upon him may lead to cooperation with federal prosecutors who are investigating the former president on a number of matters. The information Barrack could provide might, at least in theory, lead them one step closer to charging Donald Trump himself.
But can they really get there? For years now, Trump’s lieutenants have been falling, one by one, to charges and even prison sentences, though in some cases Trump was able to secure loyalty through the possibility and in some cases the actual granting of a pardon. By my count, sentences and/or criminal indictments have now come down for the following major figures around Trump:
His former campaign chair (Paul Manafort);
His former deputy campaign chair (Rick Gates);
His former campaign foreign policy adviser (George Papadopoulos);
His former chief strategist (Steve Bannon);
His former political advisor and chief dirty trickster (Roger Stone);
His former national security adviser (Michael Flynn);
His former personal lawyer (Michael Cohen); and
His company’s longtime chief financial officer (Allen Weisselberg).
Given that the offices and home of Trump’s other close confidant and lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, were also searched with numerous electronic devices seized, it’s probably not long now until Giuliani is also arrested and charged.
So where could this all lead? It’s safe to say that these actions aren’t happening in a legal vacuum and without some ultimate goal. Each raid, arrest, and charge, especially recently, lands far closer to the inner Trump circle than the last. But even the most skeptical position—that there still isn’t enough evidence to charge the former president successfully with anything concrete—leads to the conclusion that prosecutors are at a minimum still probing, shaking every tree to see if anything drops. In short, they plainly aren’t done trying to get to Trump. It’s still in the works.
It is no small matter to charge a former president of a crime, especially when that person is the de facto leader of an entire political party. An indictment of any kind would be the first ever of a former president in our nation’s history, so the circumstances had better be so exceptional as to foreclose the argument, at least in the minds of a majority of Americans, that it is merely political retribution.
Practically speaking, as the legal noose tightens the same political sycophants who went from harsh critics of Trump before 2016 to adoring supporters of him afterwards could abandon him once again if it looks politically disadvantageous to stand by their guy. That exodus could be quick and devastating, not only to Trump but to the entire GOP, which is already in the midst of a battle for what’s left of its soul.
I would urge patience and a full airing of the facts and circumstances around the foreign lobbying activities of men like Barrack and Giuliani. The public might particularly be interested in knowing, for example, where all the $23 billion awarded in UAE arms deals—which Trump personally used his veto power to ensure over strong Congressional objections—wound up going. It might also be interested in the close financial ties between Barrack on the one hand and the Kushners and Trumps on the other. (As the New York Times reported, by 2010 Barrack had acquired $70 million of the debt owed by Jared Kushner on his troubled $1.8 billion purchase of a skyscraper at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York. Trump intervened, and suddenly Barrack was among a group of lenders who agreed to reduce Kushner’s obligations in order to keep him out of bankruptcy.)
Access and deals weren’t granted for nothing; there almost certainly was a quid pro quo, to use Trump’s least favorite term. That said, “follow the money” is a valuable maxim but it is not usually an easy task. It takes time and very careful forensic investigation. It also takes cooperating witnesses, so we should be glad to now see men within Trump’s very innermost circle arrested and under intense legal pressure to flip.
Do you see any of this tying into the murder of Jamal Khashoggi? These people are all so awful, as are the people who support all of this, or at least look the other way. If many heads don't roll for this, including trump's, there will be a feeling that we really aren't a nation of laws and equal justice. When people like this get away with things like this, under some bullshit technicality, it makes people lose whatever faith they had in the judicial system, even quicker. Fingers crossed, but, they're cramping up a little.
Legal proceedings are slow - they have to be. Let's see where this all leads.