USA Today published a well-timed piece a couple of weeks ago, noting that Donald Trump has embraced a crew of convicted criminals as the former president’s campaign advances. The article included a memorable quote.
“With Lincoln, they had a team of rivals,” Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley told the newspaper. “With Trump, you have a team of felons.”
As my MSNBC colleague Hayes Brown noted, that team now has a new member.
For a guy who claims to love “law and order,” Trump sure does wind up with a lot of people who have been convicted (or pardoned) for crimes in his inner circle.
In fact, it’s time to update the big list.
- Donald Trump was charged, convicted, and is awaiting sentencing.
- Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison.
- Trump’s former campaign vice chairman, Rick Gates, was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison.
- Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison.
- Trump’s former adviser and former campaign aide, Roger Stone, was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison.
- Trump’s former adviser and former White House aide Peter Navarro, was charged, convicted, and is currently in prison.
- Trump’s former campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison.
- The Trump Organization’s former CFO, Allen Weisselberg, was charged, convicted, and sentenced to prison.
- Trump’s former White House national security advisor, Michael Flynn, was charged and convicted.
- Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, was charged with wire fraud and money laundering, in addition to a conviction in a contempt case similar to Navarro’s. He’s currently awaiting sentencing.
- Though he was later acquitted at trial, Trump’s former inaugural committee chair, Tom Barrack, was charged with illegally lobbying Trump on behalf of a foreign government. (Elliot Broidy was the vice chair of Trump’s inaugural committee, and he found himself at the center of multiple controversies, and also pled guilty to federal charges related to illegal lobbying.)
- Two lawyers associated with Trump’s post-defeat efforts, Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, have pleaded guilty to election-related crimes.
And did I mention that former president’s business was itself found guilty of tax fraud? Because it was.
This does not include the fact that a jury held Trump liable for sexual abuse in a civil case.
To be sure, some of the aforementioned men were ultimately pardoned by Trump, who doled out pardons as if they were party favors before exiting the Oval Office, but this doesn’t change the scope of the broader picture. The number of people in the Republican’s orbit who’ve been convicted of crimes in recent years is so great, The Washington Post once described it as the “remarkable universe of criminality“ surrounding the former president. That was five years ago. It’s even more remarkable now. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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