Report: Trump is terrified of going to jail after losing the election, as he should

In September 2019, donald trumpthe lawyers of made its debut a bold new legal argument. Attempting to overturn a subpoena from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which had sought eight years of tax filings to determine whether the Trump Organization falsified business records relating to payments made to a porn star and a Playboy model, the president’s lawyers insisted that such a request was unconstitutional because the Founding Fathers believed sitting presidents should not be subject to criminal trial, which would “distract the president” from his functions. Hurry by a judge on this argument, and the hypothetical Trump eliminated in the 2016 election – that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and not “lose any voters” – attorney Guillaume Consovoy insisted that yes, this sort of thing would fall under this concept of “presidential immunity”, meaning that Trump could put a bullet in a random pedestrian and avoid prosecution until he leaves the White House.

Unsurprisingly, the real jurists were not convinced by this argument, nor was the Supreme Court, which ruled last July, in the words of Reuters, “that there are limits to the powers of the presidency and firmly reaffirmed the principle that even the president is not above the law”. Yet Trump’s lackeys, including the United States Attorney General, have done their part to shield him from situations where he could be convicted of a variety of crimes, allowing him to spend almost an entire term without an embarrassing situation in which a sitting president is, for example, convicted of falsifying business documents regarding a silent payment what he did to an adult- movie star.

Unfortunately for Trump, if he loses the 2020 election, he will no longer be able to use Justice Department staff as his personal attorney. This is a worrying thing for a guy who has potentially committed many crimes, and we know this because Trump would be afraid of what he could be prosecuted for, and possibly go to jail for, after leaving office. Speak New York Times:

However, the possibility of defeat and the potential consequences of being kicked out of the White House are rarely far from Mr. Trump’s thoughts. In unguarded moments, Mr. Trump has for weeks told his advisers that he expects to face intense scrutiny from prosecutors if he loses. He is worried not only about ongoing investigations in New York, but also about the possibility of new federal investigations, according to people who have spoken to him.

Like the new yorkerit is Jeanne Mayer wrote in an article published over the weekend, the world awaiting Trump when and if he loses the election is bleak, and not just because he will no longer have taxpayer-funded staff at his disposal to lie for him :

With more than a dozen investigations and civil lawsuits involving Trump currently underway, he could be looking at an even more perilous endgame than the one Nixon faces. The presidential historian Michel Beschloss said of Trump: “If he loses, you have a situation no different than Nixon when he resigned. Nixon talked about the cell door closing. Trump has survived one impeachment, two divorces, six bankruptcies, twenty-six sexual misconduct charges and approximately four thousand lawsuits. Few have evaded the consequences with more cunning. This series of luck could well end, perhaps abruptly, if he loses against Joe Biden. Even if Trump wins, serious legal and financial threats will hang over his second term.

Two of the investigations into Trump are led by powerful state and New York City law enforcement officials. Cyrus Vance, Jr. the Manhattan District Attorney, and Letitia James, The New York attorney general is independently pursuing potential criminal charges related to Trump’s business practices before he became president. Since their jurisdictions lie outside the federal realm, any indictments or convictions resulting from their actions would be beyond the reach of a presidential pardon. Trump’s legal fees alone are likely to be daunting. (By the time bill clinton left the White House, he had racked up more than ten million dollars in legal fees.) And Trump’s finances are already under mounting pressure. Over the next four years, according to a stunning recent Time report, Trump – whether re-elected or not – must meet payment deadlines for more than three hundred million dollars in loans he has personally guaranteed; much of this debt is owed to foreign creditors such as Deutsche Bank. Unless he can refinance with lenders, he will be on the hook.

“One of the reasons he is so madly determined to win is all the speculation that prosecutors will prosecute him,” the author wrote. Barbara Res said Mayer. “It would be a very scary specter.”

Of course, when he’s not worried about losing to Biden (“Man, it’s gonna be embarrassing if I lose to this guy,” he reportedly told his advisers, according to the Time) and possibly go to jail, Trump figures he’ll win, as do his sycophant advisers who keep him in a protective bubble where he’ll be re-elected in a landslide and also nominated People‘s Sexiest Man Alive 2020. According to the Time: