For Trump, the Show and the Campaign Must Trudge On
Mr. Trump’s appearance in a Miami courtroom was a humiliating moment for a New York businessman with a 40-year history of engaging in gamesmanship with prosecutors and regulators, viewing most every interaction as a transaction or something he could bluster his way through. By 2017, he had the armor of the presidency protecting him when the first special counsel investigating him, Robert S. Mueller III, began his work. And by 2021, as investigations began into his efforts to thwart the transfer of power, he had come to see another campaign as a shield against prosecutions.
But that grandeur — and legal insulation — had vanished on Tuesday. Instead, Mr. Trump’s team tried to create the sense of a man still in power. In Bedminster, he spoke with the white columns of the main house of his New Jersey golf club behind him. The indictment became another backdrop for the ongoing Trump Show.
He was comforted by a motley assortment of his most fervent supporters. They included former President Richard Nixon’s son-in-law; a former New York Police Department commissioner whom Mr. Trump pardoned in the final year of his presidency; and a former administration official whom Mr. Trump named as a representative to the National Archives.
It was the National Archives that began the winding road that ended with Mr. Trump facing charges alleging that he had defied a subpoena and kept highly classified documents. The agency, which is in charge of preserving presidential records, spent most of 2021 trying to compel Mr. Trump to return boxes of materials that he had taken with him when he left the White House. So did some of his lawyers and advisers. When he finally returned 15 boxes in January 2022, archives officials discovered nearly 200 individual classified documents, and alerted the Justice Department.
Source: The New York Times
