As if Donald Trump weren’t already struggling on multiple fronts, the criminal trial into his family business got underway yesterday in New York. NBC News reported:
Opening arguments began Monday in the high-profile criminal tax fraud case against the Trump Organization, the former president’s family-run company that helped make him a household name. “This case is about greed and cheating,” prosecutor Susan Hoffinger told jurors in her opening statement about what she alleged was a “clever scheme.” Two corporations that are a part of the company, Trump Corp. and Trump Payroll Corp., “paid their already highly paid executives even more by cheating on their taxes,” Hoffinger said.
By most assessments, the trial should take about a month. The former president’s family business faces the possibility of stiff fines and limited options when seeking loans in the future.
But also notable is the larger context: A week before Election Day, the apparent head of the Republican Party — the GOP’s presidential nominee in 2016 and 2020, and its likely nominee in 2024 — is having to deal with a criminal tax-evasion trial surrounding his controversial business.
Also yesterday, the criminal trial of Tom Barrack, who chaired Trump’s presidential inaugural committee, also continued. In a different courthouse, jury selection also began yesterday in a civil trial related to protesters who were roughed up by the Republican’s security guards — allegedly at Trump’s urging.
The former president has already sat for a deposition in that case, though that’s not to be confused with a separate deposition Trump also recently gave as part of a case brought by E. Jean Carroll, who has accused the Republican of raping her in the 1990s.
In case that weren’t quite enough, also yesterday, Trump asked the Supreme Court to block a congressional committee from accessing his hidden tax returns, as part of a seemingly endless legal fight.
It was against this backdrop that the former president turned to his social media platform on Sunday, marveling at the fact that the Mar-a-Lago scandal still exists, simply because he stole classified materials, brought them to a glorified country club, refused to give them back, and allegedly obstructed the retrieval process.
Trump’s surprise came despite the fact that one of his close associates, Kash Patel, recently took the Fifth when pressed for grand jury answers in the investigation into the scandal — one of nine people from Team Trump to recently invoke their right against self-incrimination.
That includes, of course, the former president himself, who recently took the Fifth several hundred times as part of a civil probe into New York’s investigation into Trump’s allegedly corrupt business practices. Meanwhile, the Justice Department’s Jan. 6 investigation is also still ongoing, and federal prosecutors have asked a judge to require Trump’s former White House lawyers to testify about what they know. And did I mention that the Republican’s social media enterprise is also adding to his ongoing legal woes? These seem like relevant details to keep in mind the next time the former president prattles on about “law and order.”
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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