TAKING DOWN TRUMP

A trial lawyer explores the many ways that Donald Trump has succeeded in evading punishment—and how to thwart him henceforth.

Snell, who successfully prosecuted Trump for the Trump University fraud, argues that when confronted with lawsuits or criminal charges, Trump is his own worst enemy, “a cheap, predatory asshole who doesn’t pay his bills” and who doesn’t listen to his own underqualified lawyers. Trump has managed to stay out of trouble, Snell opines, by using tactics that can be overcome. One is the mob-boss trick of intimidating witnesses, which a few recently delivered gag rules haven’t done much to curb—but, if the judges do their jobs, could land Trump in jail. “If at all possible, get Trump under oath—and he will hang himself,” Snell urges. It’s possible but unlikely, writes the author, that Trump will agree on a plea deal that will still land him in prison, for the walls are closing in. “He’s losing in court, and he knows it,” Snell writes, “so now he’s aiming to undermine the courts entirely, to declare them all illegitimate.” But the courts are where he is, and it’s not because anyone’s out to get him. As Snell observes, he’s in court in 2023 and 2024 because he committed a swarm of alleged crimes in 2020 and 2021, and it takes a couple of years for things to go before the bench. When the former president lashes out at his legal opponents, most viciously against women and especially women of color, take that as a sign that the prosecutors are on the right track. Cheapness, narcissism, bullying: They’re not likely to work this time, Snell concludes, as they have for so many years in the past.

A valuable set of program notes; readers will eagerly wait to see if prosecutors act as Snell hopes they will.