How many allegations and attorneys does it take to send a person to jail? For former President Donald Trump, the answer appears to be: many. This week, Trump ratcheted up his fight with the Justice Department, and as Washington Post contributing columnist George Conway told Molly Jong-Fast in this episode of The New Abnormal politics podcast, Trump’s troubles could have only just begun.
The ultimate question remains, according to Jong-Fast, will Trump ever go to jail?
“I can’t guarantee it, but there’s a reasonable likelihood of it,” Conway told Jong-Fast.
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“I think it’s going to be very difficult for the Justice Department to decline prosecuting him. I think before any fair jury, he’d have to be convicted based upon what we’re seeing.
“There’s still more evidence that needs to come out, but everything points to him being in a heap of trouble and we haven’t seen everything that the Justice Department has.
“In particular, the evidence that was set forth in the sealed affidavit that was only partially unredacted but describes how the FBI learned or deduced that Trump was still holding onto documents even after his attorneys had certified to the government that all classified marked documents had been returned. It’s going to get interesting.
“He makes everything worse because they’re [Trump’s attorneys] doing what he wants them to do. He wants to go on the offense. The problem is he has no weapons to go on the offense with. And he has no legal arguments. He has no defense. He only has lies.”
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Then, Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), who represents Virginia’s 7th Congressional District and who is a former CIA case officer, delves into the image of Mar-a-Lago carpet documents.
“The idea that there might be people overseas who are risking their lives or risking imprisonment to provide vital information to the United States government… now they potentially are worried that their reports might end up on the floor, unsecured, there for the potential taking,” Spanberger said, adding it “is unbelievable to me, quite frankly.”
She said the right’s claims the material taken from Trump “is just documents” is false.
“No, it’s classified documents, that’s indeed in the intelligence world, what you go after. And there’s really no more significant or important thing to get your hands on than classified documents from another country’s intelligence services. It’s just stunning.
“I can’t make predictions on what comes next, but certainly as a former intel officer, I can say that if anyone I ever worked with had a collection of documents like this at their home, there’s no question of what would’ve happened to them.”
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