While Donald Trump doesn’t say so publicly, a new report indicates that he is privately spinning himself into a frenzy over the growing possibility that his son could be thrown in jail.
According to The Associated Press, the president views the ongoing Paul Manafort trial as a “warning shot” from special counsel Robert Mueller.
While Mueller has his way with Trump’s former campaign chairman, the president fears that Donald Trump Jr. might be his next target.
More from the report:
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The president has stewed over the media coverage of the federal trial of Paul Manafort, his former campaign chairman, who has been charged with financial fraud as part of the Mueller probe. Though the trial is not connected to Russian election interference, Trump has seethed to confidants that he views the Manafort charges as “a warning shot†from Mueller. He has told those close to him that as he watches the courtroom proceedings, he fears that Donald Trump Jr. could at some point be the one on trial, according to two people familiar with his thinking but not authorized to discuss private conversations.
The irony is that Trump’s public behavior only makes it more likely that his private concerns will be realized.
As the AP added on Wednesday: “Despite his behind-closed-doors concerns, the president publicly denies that he is worried about his son. While doing so on Twitter in recent days, he offered a new — and potentially legally damaging — explanation of why his son is under such legal scrutiny.”
Trump has only made it more likely that Don Jr. will go to prisonÂ
If Donald Trump is so concerned about his son’s wellbeing, he has a funny way of showing it.
As we reported on Monday, Trump essentially confessed – for all the world to see – that a crime was committed by his son. In a tweet, he flatly said, “This was a meeting to get information on an opponent.”
Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower. This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics – and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 5, 2018
As lawyer and legal scholar Laurence Tribe pointed out on Twitter this week, Trump’s tweet is essentially an admission that his son, and possibly he himself, committed crimes.
52 USC 30121(a)(2) outlaws what POTUS has tweeted Don Jr did in soliciting campaign help from Russian nationals. 18 USC 371 makes all who agreed to this unlawful act guilty of a felony punishable by 5 years in prison if any conspirator did anything overt to further the plot. QED.
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) August 6, 2018
The president’s own public admissions have greatly increased the likelihood that Donald Trump Jr. will face legal consequences for taking a meeting with Russia to get dirt on Hillary Clinton. We now know the intent of the meeting, and it’s too late for Trump to put the cat back in the bag.
But if the president is so privately concerned about the fate of his son, he should stop talking.
Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
