The Donald Trump I know is a smart guy who often thinks a few steps ahead of those whose will he is trying to bend. But I lately wonder whether he grasps the gravity of the legal peril that is beginning to show up around him. In the past week, we learned of an unfiltered public confession of frustration and weakness among his lawyers and we learned that his former chief confidant and campaign manager is about to be indicted. This is very bad news for President Trump.
Here is the back story.
Trump has hired two experienced Washington criminal defense lawyers to represent him in dealings with Robert Mueller, the independent special counsel who is investigating what connection, if any, there was between Trump’s presidential campaign and elements of the Russian government. Mueller has apparently struck a raw nerve in the West Wing of the White House, where Trump’s criminal defense lawyers and the White House legal counsel all work.
The nerve was struck over the appropriate response to document requests from Mueller. White-collar criminal investigations, of which this is one, often begin with documents. The government seeks from a potential defendant what it believes is evidence of his crimes from his own records. In the Trump/Russia investigations, Trump’s personally employed criminal defense lawyers have disagreed with the federal government-employed White House legal counsel about whether to surrender everything that Mueller has requested.
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The criminal defense lawyers who represent the president as a private person are apparently of the belief that he has done no wrong and the surrendering of…