Trump Lashes Out at Prosecutors Like a Man Who Knows He’s About to Be Held Accountable for the First Time in His Life

There’s a lot going on here. Let’s start with the fact that it’s really quite something to watch Trump, an abject racist, accuse three Black prosecutors of racism against him. But mostly, Trump’s fevered performance suggests that he’s completely terrified of the consequences that might be coming for him. If you haven’t been keeping up with the various developments across all of the investigations into the ex-president, as a reminder, Letitia James has been looking into alleged wrongdoing by the Trump Organization for more than two years, and earlier this month, said in a court filing that her office had found “significant evidence” of fraud committed by the family business. Announcing legal action against them, James said in a statement that “Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., and Ivanka Trump have all been closely involved in the transactions in question, so we won’t tolerate their attempts to evade testifying in this investigation,” a turn of events that the ex-president flipped out over, suggesting that his “children” should be off limits despite the fact that they are in their 40s and have both been senior executives at the Trump Organization, including during the time being examined by James.

As for Trump’s claims during the rally in regards to James’s investigation, it may not surprise you to learn they’re extremely Trumpian in that they’re total bullshit. For example, when he speaks of the millions of pages of documents the Trump Organization has turned over, he conveniently leaves out the fact that, per James, the company has not “made anything approaching a complete production of documents for Mr. Trump,“ including the handwritten notes the famously email and computer-averse Trump used to “communicate with employees.” When he talks about it supposedly being improper for James to have campaigned on holding him accountable, he does not mention that approximately 63% of his 2016 campaign was about locking Hillary Clinton up (the other 37% arguably being about racism and making Mexico pay for the wall).

Meanwhile, in an incredible tell that Trump is soiling himself over what might come out of James’s investigation, he already appears to be offering himself an out by suggesting that he “relied on” other people, namely, “major law firms and accounting firms and other professionals.” (Incidentally, this preemptive deflection of blame is reminiscent of the statement Trump’s lawyer gave to The New York Times after it uncovered evidence of “outright fraud” by the then president and his siblings, in which his attorney said: “There was no fraud or tax evasion by anyone. The facts upon which the Times bases its false allegations are extremely inaccurate. President Trump had virtually no involvement whatsoever with these matters. The affairs were handled by other Trump family members who were not experts themselves and therefore relied entirely upon the aforementioned licensed professionals to ensure full compliance with the law.” In other words, “there was no fraud or tax evasion,” but just in case there actually was, Donald Trump is completely innocent and the licensed professionals he paid and/or his siblings are to blame.)