Friday, Oct. 29, 2021 | 2 a.m.
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Throughout his scandal-ridden career, Donald Trump has compiled an astonishing record of impunity, constantly staying one jump ahead of prosecutors, plaintiffs and creditors.
He is the only president to be impeached twice, and acquitted twice.
He spent almost three years under investigation for collusion with Russia, then walked away scot-free.
His former lawyer, Michael Cohen, went to prison for paying hush money to an adult entertainer known as Stormy Daniels, but “Individual-1,” the man who ordered him to write the check, was never held accountable.
That record of escapes would make Houdini envious.
But Trump remains under the gun. He’s still in search of escape routes.
A House committee is examining his attempts to overturn last year’s presidential election, including his actions when a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.
A prosecutor in Georgia is investigating whether he violated state law against soliciting election fraud when he demanded that officials “find 11,780 votes” — the number he needed to undo Joe Biden’s victory in that state.
And prosecutors in New Yorkare looking into allegations that Trump, or at least the closely held family business he runs, committed tax and bank fraud.
But don’t count him out.
The former president’s most visible battles are against the Democratic-led House of Representatives, which asked the Justice Department to prosecute his former aide Steven Bannon after Bannon refused to comply with a subpoena.
Trump has ordered Bannon and other former associates to stonewall on the grounds that all of his conversations with them are protected by executive privilege.
In this case, the claim sounds far-fetched: How can he assert executive privilege over conversations with someone like Bannon, who wasn’t a government official at the time?
But constitutional lawyers say Trump has several arguments he can make. He’ll probably try them all.
First, a former president does have the right to assert executive privilege. Trump can thank former President Richard Nixon for that. In 1977, Nixon tried to block the federal government from releasing his presidential papers; he lost, but in deciding the case, the Supreme Court declared that former presidents can assert the privilege under some circumstances.
As for Bannon, the Justice Department has long argued that executive privilege can protect a president’s meetings with nonemployees as long as the discussion covers official business. In January, Bannon reportedly urged Trump to block Congress from certifying Biden’s election, then told listeners of his Jan. 5 podcast: “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow.”
“If the cases are argued on the merits, Trump and Bannon are unlikely to prevail,” said Jonathan Shaub, a former Justice Department lawyer who teaches at the University of Kentucky’s law school. “Executive privilege doesn’t apply to acts taken in a personal or political capacity, and it doesn’t apply when there are concrete allegations of wrongdoing.”
But winning may not be the point.
Trump and his supporters know that if they can tie the House committee in knots until the 2022 congressional election, Republicans could win control of the chamber and kill the investigation.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi andcommittee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., know that too. That’s a major reason they asked the Justice Department to prosecute Bannon for criminal contempt; it’s faster than a civil suit.
The next step is up to Attorney General Merrick Garland, who has exasperated some Democrats by keeping his distance from the Trump investigations.
President Joe Biden said he thinks Garland should prosecute Bannon and others who reject congressional subpoenas. That was an improper, Trump-style act of presidential jawboning; Garland pushed back, saying he wanted to return the Justice Department to its apolitical norm.
But Biden was right on the merits; without the threat of prosecution, Bannon and others will continue to stonewall.
Meanwhile, Trump has made his defense almost entirely political, not only denouncing the House investigation but praising the mob that invaded the Capitol.
He’s used the investigation to raise money for his political action committee, which has collected millions.
And there, no matter how the legal wrangles turn out, lies the answer to a persistent question about Trump: What makes him run?
Ego, surely, in part. A desire to take revenge on his adversaries too.
But two practical reasons, as well.
One is money. Political contributions may be the most reliable revenue stream the Trump family enterprise has.
The other, equally important, is to bolster his legal defense. As long as he’s running (or even sort of running), Trump can denounce every inquest and subpoena as just another part of a political vendetta.It’s a way to hold his troops together — and to make every prosecutor think twice.
He’s notching up another presidential first: He’s running for reelection to stay out of jail.
Doyle McManus is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times.
