As Deposed Donald Trump (DDT) remains ensconced at Mar-a-Lago permitting favored ones into his presence, his advisers grow increasingly concerned about the immense buildup of legal investigations and filings. Yet loyalists must tell him he will probably remain safe from lawsuits emanating from his incitement of violence at the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
Last week, two Capitol Police officers injured on January 6 while engaged in hand-to-hand combat are suing DDT for inciting his supporters who mobbed the Capitol to stop the Electoral College election of President Joe Biden. Officers James Blassingame and Sidney Hemby assert DDT has the direct responsibility for the insurrection because of his call to riot. Blassingame describes how rioters slammed him into a stone column while shouting racial slurs. Hemby, who was also sprayed with a chemical spray, said his hand and knee injuries still require medical care two months later. Both men suffer emotional trauma. DDT has tried to rework stories of January 6 by calling it a peaceful assembly with “zero threat.”
After breaking free of the crowd, Blassingame helped House members evacuate to a committee room and stayed among the maskless people until 7:30 pm. Hemby couldn’t get medical assistance until 9:00 pm. Part of the lawsuit uses speeches by GOP congressional members such as Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-CA) who stated DDT could be legally liable for inciting the riot.
Their suit follows ones by Reps. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and Eric Swalwell (D-CA). Another political case against DDT filed in late December accuses DDT and the Republican National Committee of conspiring to violate the rights of Black voters. The case asks the judge to not only stop them from any further actions to overturn or undermine the 2020 election but also issue an order forcing them to obtain court approval for demands of recounts or participation in future “post-election activities.” In January 2018, a federal judge in New Jersey lifted the 1982 court-monitored settlement banning the RNC from “ballot security” activities based on the “racial or ethnic composition” of a specific community. In that agreement, the RNC agreed it had tried to intimidate, threaten, and disenfranchise voters through voter roll purges and by paying police officers to patrol polling sites in predominantly Black and Latino areas under the pretense of preventing election fraud.
This lawsuit expands a November case that the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) filed in federal court in Washington, DC, against DDT and his campaign for deliberately focusing fraud accusations on cities with large Black populations, including Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia. These claims were brought under the federal Voting Rights Act and the Ku Klux Klan Act.
The Fulton County (GA) DA, Fani Willis, is pursuing an investigation into DDT’s election fraud through his telephone calls begging officials, including Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, to cheat on counting votes from the 2020 general election in DDT’s favor. Willis is putting together an investigative team, and two grand juries are underway, close to making subpoena demands for documents and recordings. She’s searching for three more lawyers and another investigator.
DDT’s Supreme Court justices, who were appointed to return him to the White House, have rejected the last of three cases to challenge his election loss, the one about absentee ballots in Wisconsin. The other two were about Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Another rejected case asking justices to block the January 5 Senate runoff elections in Georgia was filed by DDT’s loyalist Lin Wood. Democrats won both these elections bringing their total to 50 members.
Wisconsin’s Democratic Gov. Tony Evers is going to court for over $250,000 from DDT that the state paid to defend the popular vote against his attempt to overturn the vote so he could return to the White House. The request for an order states DDT and his attorneys brought their two lawsuits “in bad faith.”
A New York appeals court is permitting a defamation lawsuit by former Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos against DDT because he is no longer in the White House. DDT denied her allegations about sexually assaulting her in 2007, and Zervos wants to depose DDT as part of her lawsuit. She is one of two women suing him for defamation.
Three cases against DDT are being prosecuted by Roberta Kaplan, well-known for the Supreme Court case U.S. v. Windsor regarding legalized marriage equality. Kaplan is filing civil suits for defamation, fraud, and more fraud against DDT by his niece Mary Trump and writer E. Jean Carroll. DDT had claimed Carroll was lying about his raping her, and Trump’s case is about DDT and two of his siblings depriving her of an inheritance worth millions by lying about the worth of his father’s estate. Kaplan’s third case concerns the relationship of DDT and his three oldest children with a purported pyramid scheme by ACN.
DDT’s biggest problem may come from the New York criminal probe into his business affairs. Prosecutors are examining millions of pages recently acquired in a search for witnesses who can explain these to a jury. The next step is issuing subpoenas regarding the investigation into DDT’s reduction of his tax liabilities by lying about property values. Financial records about DDT’s Chicago skyscraper and his Seven Springs estate in Westchester County (NY) have been subpoenaed. In addition to possible criminal charges filed by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., New York Attorney General Letitia James may file civil charges.
A judge has voided DDT’s non-disclosure agreement (NDA) with Jessica Denson, his former Latinx outreach director, ruling it too vague and broad to enforce under New York’s contract law. Although the decision applies only to Denson’s NDA, the same ruling may be possible for all DDT’s NDAs. The judge described the scope of the NDA as “unlimited,” that “campaign employees are not free to speak about anything concerning the Campaign.” The broadness makes the NDA “not reasonable.” Earlier, a campaign arbitrator issued a $50,000 award against Denson for violating the NDA, but it was overturned. Denson believes the NDAs blocked criticism about DDT for the past six years.
DDT typically required the same secrecy of his companies’ employees and staff before he followed the same practice in his campaign and the White House. First Amendment experts warned him public employees could not constitutionally be forced to swear an oath of secrecy. Last year, DDT’s DOJ used an NDA to file a lawsuit against Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former volunteer adviser to first lady Melania Trump, over Winston Wolkoff’s tell-all book. The suit was dropped days after Biden’s inauguration.
While in the White House, DDT and his top officials indulged themselves in shady deals now coming into the light. They fought key oversight investigations conducted by government watchdogs in at least nine different cases. A high profile one concluded Elaine Chao, wife of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), abused her position as Transportation Secretary for personal reasons such as helping a family business. In another one, a White House physician, retired Navy rear admiral Ronny Jackson who raved about DDT’s superb health, abused substances while on the job and created a toxic work environment for his staff.
The revelations can have no consequences because Chao resigned her position after the Electoral College determined Biden as president. Jackson has been elected as a U.S. representative from Texas.
Investigators described almost impossible obstructions: DDT’s attorneys made internal communications off limits because of their confidential nature and demanded to be present at witness interviews. Information was released either extremely slowly or not at all, preventing the ability to assess and correct internal problems in real time. DDT’s ultimate solution to investigations was to fire internal investigators.
Future releases of investigations may be the White House blocking delivery of Puerto Rico’s financial aid after Hurricane Maria and the Commerce Department’s attempt to add a citizenship question to the U.S. census. The Pentagon is also looking into the $400 million border-wall contract DT wanted to award to a subpar North Dakota construction company. The General Services Administration inspector general is conducting a sweeping review of responses to the coronavirus from several different federal agencies.
Congress will now have the ability to examine records from DDT’s term, blocked from them during the past four years. The Presidential Records Act (PRA) allows former presidents to restrict access to their records for 12 years, but an exception permits release of records to Congress or “any committee or subcommittee thereof if such records contain information that is needed for the conduct of its business and that is not otherwise available.” These can include DDT’s blackmail in Ukraine, Michael Flynn’s lies to the FBI, the January 6 attempted insurrection, White House visitor logs, DDT’s phone logs, and other abuses of power. In the past, Democrats could not get records from the archives, which released them only to the majority party. Democrats now are the majority although they may suffer some delays. DDT can cite privilege, but Biden must uphold his claims. In filing lawsuits, DDT no longer has the support of the Department of Justice and must fund the lawsuits himself with personal lawsuits.
The import of the business lawsuits is beginning to sink into Eric Trump’s perception as shown by his meltdown on the Fox network. He was close to tears when he talked about what his family was facing.
Defending himself from defamation, fraud, and corruption. That is the future of the man who spent the last four years ruling from the White House and now hides in Florida.