Trump wants Americans to pay up for his crimes

Donald Trump’s utmost assault on American democracy and the rule of law has been his ability to exploit these foundational institutions to weaken each as he constantly makes a mockery of both. Contrary to Trump’s repetitive narrative about how the Justice Department, state prosecutors, and the courts are engaging in some kind of persecution or witch-hunt and/or weaponization of the rule of law against the former president as part of a “deep state” conspiracy to interfere with his winning back the presidency in 2024, these civil and criminal agencies of adjudication have been bending over backward to privilege or accommodate Trump’s perpetual lawlessness inside and outside various courthouses across America. Instead, Trump made another political speech claiming that the New York civil trial is a ‘fraud on me ’ and that he was “an innocent man” who claimed among other things that the New York Attorney General Letitia James “hates” him and “doesn’t want me to get elected.” Trump also stated to the presiding judge, “I know this is boring you. Trump’s fraudulent business dealings involved in this civil case, like using other people’s money vis-à-vis deceitfully acquired lower interest rates along with tax evasion, are consistent with the former president’s modus operandi and sheds light on some of the other ways in which the 45th president’s appointments of free marketers and deregulators facilitated financial looting on a much grander scale. The GOP’s $1.9 trillion tax break for the wealthy, signed by Trump, is perhaps the most infamous example As I have argued in Indicting the 45 th President, “the Racketeer-in-Chief as POTUS had established from the top down an administrative apparatus marked by placing self-interest, profiteering, and corruption above the public welfare.” In similar fashion, Trump’s “networks for raising and flowing cash loads of electronic money also helped to contribute to the ‘deadly insurrection that was rooted in the same self-serving ethos’.” By the end of 2023, the ex-president had already spent more than $57 million of other people’s money on his legal fees, which will very likely continue to grow for the foreseeable future.