Criminal Trouble ‘Increases Trump’s Street Cred’ as He Faces Likely Charges for Classified Docs
Special counsel is dotting "all his ‘i’s and crosses his ‘t’s" ahead of another indictment of the former president
Donald Trump's mounting legal trouble only “increases his street cred” with his cult-like supporters, according to the former president's niece, even as he faces a likely second criminal indictment for withholding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Already indicted once in New York on 34 felony counts in connection with a hush-money scheme to keep quiet an extramarital affair, Trump soon will probably face a second indictment for keeping sensitive federal documents after he left the White House and withholding them even after issued a subpoena to turn them over.
Although federal charges in the Mar-a-Lago documents case would deepen the legal peril he faces, Trump's popularity with the base of the Republican Party continues unabated as Trump is making another run for president.
“And let’s face it, I don’t know that it matters that he is, to some degree, finally being held to account, because I think on the one hand, that increases his street cred for some of his followers,” said niece Mary Trump, who has been a consistent and loud critic of her uncle. “And on the other hand, regardless, he will be, unless something happens, the Republican nominee for president of the United States in 2024.”
Trump is polling far ahead of his rivals in running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
Jack Smith, the Justice Department special counsel heading up federal investigations into Trump, is getting ready to close his probe into the former president's document-handling, according to Paul Butler, a former prosecutor, and current law professor of Georgetown University Law Center in Washington DC.
Smith reportedly has obtained a 2021 recording in which the former president appears to say he has a classified document, which would undercut his claims that he either declassified the documents or didn't know of their existence at his Florida home.
“We’re going to a full prosecution here. It could mean a trial. Number two, I think — you have alluded to this. It’s a little different when you are dealing with the president,” said another former federal prosecutor, David Kelley. “While a prosecutor, particularly Mr. Smith, is going to make sure he dots all his ‘i’s and crosses his ‘t’s, you do that two, three, four times whether you deal with something as unprecedented as indicting the former president of the United States.”
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