Tag: 2016 trump campaign
Jury Acquits Former Clinton Lawyer And Quashes 'Russia Witch Hunt' Claims

Jury Acquits Former Clinton Lawyer And Quashes 'Russia Witch Hunt' Claims

Fervent hopes on the right that Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation would unearth a Watergate-level scandal in the Democratic camp took a hammering on Tuesday. A federal jury acquitted Michael Sussmann, an attorney for the Hilary Clinton campaign, of lying to the FBI when he tipped the bureau off in 2016 that the Trump Organization was allegedly in secret communication with Russia.

Members of the jury deliberated for only six hours spread over parts of Friday and Tuesday before reaching their verdict, which two jurors said “was not a close call or a hard decision,” according to the Washington Post.

The verdict is a significant blow for Durham and his prosecutors, who have spent three years scouring the Trump-Russia probe for government wrongdoing. The investigation has yielded only three charges and one conviction with no jail time.

The case focused on Sussmann's September 19, 2016, meeting with his friend and then-senior FBI official, James Baker, to whom he handed thumb drives of Internet data that cybersecurity experts said could show covert communication channels allegedly used by the Trump Administration to contact Alfa Bank, a Russian bank with ties to the Kremlin.

Trump’s representatives denied the existence of the secret communication channel, and a security firm hired by Alfa Bank to investigate the allegations denounced them as baseless.

During the two-week trial, Durham and his prosecutors argued that Sussmann falsely told Baker that he hadn't approached the bureau on behalf of any client -- allegedly hiding that he was working for the Clinton campaign and an Internet executive who gave him the tip.

Through court filings and Baker’s testimony, Durham described how Sussmann had tried to get reporters to write about the suspicions swirling around the Trump campaign and Alfa Bank.

Pressing journalists to cover such suspicions isn’t a crime, so the trial zeroed in on whether or not Sussmann had lied to the FBI when he informed Baker that he had raised issue as a private citizen and not while representing the Clinton campaign.

Prosecutors called Baker to the stand, where the ex-top bureau official testified he was “100 percent confident” that Sussmamn had misled him about his representation.

"Michael started to explain why he was there, and he said that he was not appearing before me on behalf of any particular client," Baker said about their meeting. He echoed Durham's theory that Sussmann had lied when he told Baker he had come “only as a concerned citizen, and not on behalf of any clients,” CNN reported.

Republicans following the case were thrilled when Durham pushed for an even bigger angle in the case: namely that a cabal-like enterprise masterminded an egregious attempt to frame then-candidate Trump -- a suggestion that’s strikingly similar to the conspiracy theory at the root of QAnon.

Sussmann’s defense said that prosecutors had provided no evidence that the Clinton campaign had signed off on Sussmann’s visit to Baker.

The defense also argued that the FBI already knew Sussmann represented the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee on other issues. Yet, the bureau investigated Sussmann’s data regardless and eventually dismissed it and the allegations it had prompted.

Sussmann’s lawyers argued that the case was flawed on myriad grounds, one of which was prosecutors’ inability to prove with certainty what their client had said to Baker, a conclusion apparently shared by the jury.

Outside the courthouse, the jury forewoman told news organizations that the prosecution had failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. “The government had the job of proving beyond a reasonable doubt,” she said. “We broke it down...as a jury. It didn’t pan out in the government’s favor,” the forewoman, who declined to give her name, told reporters.

According to Politco, Sussmann, who was wearing a mask, remained upright and showed no emotion as the jury verdict was read. However, his lead attorneys, Sean Berkowitz and Michael Bosworth, reportedly shared an embrace after the case was gaveled to a close.

Shortly after the verdict, Sussmann read a brief statement outside the courthouse, thanking his lawyers and expressing his relief that justice had prevailed. “I told the truth to the FBI and the jury clearly recognized that with their unanimous verdict today,” Sussmann said to journalists. “Despite being falsely accused, I believe that justice ultimately prevailed in my case.”

Berkowitz and Bosworth declined offers to speak on camera, but the pair blasted the prosecutors in a joint statement.

“Michael Sussmann should never have been charged in the first place. This is a case of extraordinary prosecutorial overreach. And we believe that today’s verdict sends an unmistakable message to anyone who cares to listen: politics is no substitute for evidence, and politics has no place in our system of justice,” the lead attorneys said.

The jury forewoman answered a reporter who sought her opinion on the trial’s relevancy. “Personally, I don’t think it should have been prosecuted because I think we have better time or resources to use or spend [on] other things that affect the nation as a whole than a possible lie to the FBI. We could spend that time more wisely.”

Durham didn’t participate personally in the trial, but he was in the courtroom when the verdict was read, according to the New York Times. He quietly left the courthouse afterward and later issued a statement expressing disappointment with the verdict.

“While we are disappointed in the outcome, we respect the jury’s decision and thank them for their service. I also want to recognize and thank the investigators and the prosecution team for their dedicated efforts in seeking truth and justice in this case,” Durham said.

Writing about Sussmann's acquittal in New York magazine, Jonathan Chait summed up the prosecution failure. As Chait explains, "to the extent that Durham deepened the public understanding of Trump’s conspiracy theory of the Russia investigation, he inadvertently undermined it. I argued in 2020 that Joe Biden’s Justice Department was correct to let Durham continue his investigation because it would expose the hollowness of Trump’s allegations. And it has."

Jason Miller

Jason Miller, Trump Attack Dog, Smeared Gov. Whitmer Over Foiled Plot

Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Donald Trump's reelection campaign, condemned Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in an appearance on Fox News Wednesday.

Miller's comments came just hours after news broke of a foiled plot by right-wing extremists to kidnap Whitmer and overthrow the government.

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What Mueller Really Knows About Trump (And Russia)

What Mueller Really Knows About Trump (And Russia)

Reprinted with permission from DCReport.

Robert S. Mueller knows a great deal more than he put in his richly detailed 448-page report.

He says so again and again right in the report.

Two crucial words he put into the report at least eight times are messages to our Congress and the rest of us about how his investigation was hamstrung by rules from telling all that he and his team learned.

Those two words: “admissible evidence.”

The federal courts have developed ever more detailed rules about what evidence is admissible and what is not. The Justice Department has expanded its manual for prosecutors to adapt to these rules.

Only one group has benefitted more from these rules than white-collar criminals, who have lawyers like Roy Cohn and Michael Cohen to advise them on how to lie, cheat and steal without much risk of being indicted and much less risk of being convicted.

Our federal government makes only a minimalist attempt to pursue white-collar criminals. For example, during tax season in February only 71 criminal tax cases were filed in the whole country. Most of them involved drug dealers or bribe-taking politicians, not flat-out tax cheats. And there were just 52 convictions, half of the level of five years ago.

But the one group that benefits even more than white-collar crooks from court rules on admissible evidence are foreign agents and spies. That’s because they are beyond the reach of American law enforcement in most cases, Russian spy Maria Butina being a notable exception.

Mueller indicted 25 Russians, half of them military officers, and three Russian companies, but he has no way to bring them to trial unless they do something incredibly stupid like set foot on American soil. Capturing just one of them, and making him flip, would terrify Trump—and for good reason, based on the Mueller Report findings.

Congress, however, is not burdened by the evidence rules that constrained Team Mueller.

Our Congress can go wherever the facts point. That freedom can be abused, which Trump is sure to continually complain is the case. But the freedom to look for the truth also means that Congress can see past the smoke and spot the fires causing it.

Mueller, in closed-door sessions and in public testimony, will be free to tell what evidence he had, but that did not meet the standards of his charter, of the Justice Department manual governing its prosecutors, or federal court rules.

Attorney General William Barr, who lied through his teeth at his gratuitous press conference just before he gave the report to Congress, said that Mueller would be free to testify to Congress. We’ll see, but don’t count on Barr having been honest — because his actions over the years show he is not honest.

The report, in the language below from Page 18 of Volume 1, is pregnant with a message to Congress about evidence the special counsel could not include:

The investigation did not always yield admissible information or testimony, or a complete picture of the activities undertaken by subjects of the investigation. Some individuals invoked their Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination and were not, in the Office’s judgment, appropriate candidates for grants of immunity. The Office limited its pursuit of other witnesses and information-such as information known to attorneys or individuals claiming to be members of the media—in light of internal Department of Justice policies. See, e.g., Justice Manual§§ 9-13.400, 13.410. Some of the information obtained via court process, moreover, was presumptively covered by legal privilege and was screened from investigators by a filter (or “taint”) team. Even when individuals testified or agreed to be interviewed, they sometimes provided information that was false or incomplete, leading to some of the false-statements charges described above. And the Office faced practical limits on its ability to access relevant evidence as well-numerous witnesses and subjects lived abroad, and documents were held outside the United States.

Further, the Office learned that some of the individuals we interviewed or whose conduct we investigated-including some associated with the Trump Campaign—deleted relevant communications or communicated during the relevant period using applications that feature encryption or that do not provide for long-term retention of data or communications records. In such cases, the Office was not able to corroborate witness statements through comparison to contemporaneous communications or fully question witnesses about statements that appeared inconsistent with other known facts.

Accordingly, while this report embodies factual and legal determinations that the Office believes to be accurate and complete to the greatest extent possible, given these identified gaps, the Office cannot rule out the possibility that the unavailable information would shed additional light on (or cast in a new light) the events described in the report.

Mueller also notes, at page 182, that his office found significant evidence of involvement with Russians linked to the Kremlin, but brought charges in only some cases because of the admissible evidence rule.

Mueller said his team “determined that the contacts between Campaign officials and Russia-linked individuals either did not involve the commission of a federal crime or, in the case of campaign-finance offenses, that our evidence was not sufficient to obtain and sustain a criminal conviction. At the same time, the Office concluded that the Principles of Federal Prosecution supported charging certain individuals connected to the Campaign with making false statements or otherwise obstructing this investigation or parallel congressional investigations.”

At page 193, Mueller wrote that his office “considered whether to charge Trump Campaign officials with crimes in connection with the June 9 meeting [at Trump Tower]… The Office concluded that, in light of the government’s substantial burden of proof on issues of intent (‘knowing’ and ‘willful’) , and the difficulty of establishing the value of the offered information, criminal charges would not meet the Justice Manual standard that ‘the admissible evidence will probably be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction.’ Justice Manual§ 9-27.220.”

He explains further on the next page that “the Office did not obtain admissible evidence likely to meet the government’s burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that these individuals acted ‘willfully,’ i.e., with general knowledge of the illegality of their conduct; and, second, the government would likely encounter difficulty in proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the value of the promised information exceeded the threshold for a criminal violation.”

In other words, wrongful acts took place, but court rules and Justice Department policies together with missing, destroyed or unavailable (from the Kremlin agents in the meeting) evidence are too strict to make a criminal case, which requires convincing 12 jurors beyond a reasonable doubt of criminal intent.

And despite the axiom that ignorance of the law is no defense, it actually can be for white-collar crimes, as Mueller wrote at page 194. He focuses on the word scienter, a legal term that means knowledge of wrongdoing.

“Most significantly, the government has not obtained admissible evidence that is likely to establish the scienter requirement beyond a reasonable doubt. To prove that a defendant acted ‘knowingly and willfully,’ the government would have to show that the defendant had general knowledge that his conduct was unlawful,” Mueller wrote.

Think of that as the “too stupid to be guilty of a crime” defense.

Even if a fully un-redacted version of the Mueller Report becomes available –and it will, even if it not until some distant future day – it is vital that Mueller and his team testify before Congress.

Mueller almost shouts to us and our Congress that the full Mueller report is far from the full report on what his team learned about our president and his embrace of Kremlin help to get into the Oval Office.

We need to hear all the facts.

The 47 Minutes That Told Us Everything About Trump

The 47 Minutes That Told Us Everything About Trump

Reprinted with permission from TomDispatch.

Recently, I did something rare in my life. Over a long weekend, I took a few days away and almost uniquely — I might even say miraculously — never saw Donald Trump’s face, since I didn’t watch TV and barely checked the news. They were admittedly terrible days in which 50 people were slaughtered in New Zealand.  Meanwhile, the president indulged in another mad round of tweeting, managing in my absence to lash out at everything and everyone in sight (or even beyond the grave) from John McCain, Saturday Night Live, and the Mueller “witch hunt” to assorted Democrats and even Fox News for suspending host Jeanine Pirro’s show. In his version of the ultimate insult, he compared Fox to CNN. And I was blissfully ignorant of it all, which left me time to finally give a little thought to… Donald Trump.

And when I returned, on an impulse, I conjured up the initial Trumpian moment of our recent lives. I’m aware, of course, that The Donald first considered running for president in the Neolithic age of 1987.  He tried to register and trademark “Make America Great Again,” a version of an old Reagan campaign slogan, only days after Mitt Romney lost the 2012 presidential election to President Obama.  He then rode that president’s “birth certificate” into the post-Apprentice public spotlight amid a growing wave of racism in a country founded on slavery that has never truly grappled with that fact.

Still, the 47 minutes and eight seconds that I was thinking about took place more recently. On June 16, 2015, Donald and Melania Trump stepped onto a Trump Tower escalator and rode it down to the pounding beat of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World” (a song the singer would soon demand, without success, that the presidential hopeful not use). A minute and a half later, they arrived in the Trump Tower lobby. There, a clapping Ivanka greeted her father with a kiss on each cheek — the first signal of the corporatist, family-style presidency to come. Then, The Donald stepped to the microphone and promptly launched his run into fake-news history.

Sometimes, the only way to go forward, or at least know where you are in the present, is to go back. Yes, Donald Trump garnered much news with his announcement that day and was already visibly having the time of his life, but no one in or out of the media then thought he had a shot at being president. Even he was only burnishing his brand. As Michael Wolff reported in his book Fire and Fury, even on election night 2016, almost a year and a half later, with the possible exception of Steve Bannon, no one in the Trump camp, including The Donald, had the slightest expectation of his winning the presidency. All of them were just burnishing their future brands.

And yet, in the spring of 2019, those largely forgotten 47 minutes are worth another look because, in retrospect, they provide such a vivid window into what was to come, what’s still coming. They offer the future president not naked at last, but naked at first, and so represent an episode of revelatory wonder (and, had anyone then believed that he might actually win the presidency, of revelatory dread as well)

The Candidate Naked as a Jaybird

Having taken another look at that first speech, I now think of the Trump era so far as the 47-minute presidency. It’s nothing short of wondrous just how strikingly that de-escalatory ride and the Trumpian verbal strip tease that followed before a cheering crowd revealed, point by point, the essence of his presidency to come. And by the way, it was certainly indicative of that future presidency that the audience (reporters aside) listening to him in the lobby of Trump Tower seems largely to have been made up of out-of-work actors being paid $50 a pop to cheer him on. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the email sent out by Extra Mile Casting to recruit those extras read in part: “We are looking to cast people for the event to wear t-shirts and carry signs and help cheer him in support of his announcement. We understand this is not a traditional ‘background job,’ but we believe acting comes in all forms and this is inclusive of that school of thought.”

And given what would happen, never has an audience been bought more cheaply or effectively.

It’s hardly news today that Donald Trump would prove a unique candidate in American presidential history. On that first day, the most uniquely unique aspect of his speech (and, in the age of Trump, I offer no apologies for such an over-the-top superlative) was the utter, even brutal, honesty with which he presented — or perhaps the better word would be displayed — himself to the American people. To paint an even more honest picture, the one thing he might have done was ride that escalator up, not down, to his announcement. After all, his would be an escalation presidency of the first order. In crisis — and when is The Donald not in crisis? — it’s in his nature to escalate.

So bear with me here as I take us back almost four years to look once again at how it all began, at the way in which, after those 47 minutes, you could have turned off your TV, blocked out all those cable news talking heads, and never looked at the man again. After all, by then you knew everything you truly needed to know (except one thing that I’ll return to below) in order to grasp the Trumpian moment to come. In that sense, I think it’s fair to say, without a hint of Trump Tower-style exaggeration, that The Donald was the most honest presidential candidate we’ve ever had.

Honesty may be an odd label to slap on such a man. After all, he lies incessantly. He misstates regularly. He creates false facts anytime he needs them and then sticks with them forever — and he did just that, with alacrity and aplomb, on his very first day. In some sense, almost everything he says might be considered a lie of sorts, but the lying, misstating, absurd claims, and over-the-top pronouncements are done so nakedly, are so easy to debunk (or, if you prefer, like much of his base, to accept as reality), that they might almost be considered another form of honesty. They are, at least, a form of Trumpian revelation and so nakedness.

The general rule of politics is, of course, that the one thing you don’t do is offer yourself exactly as you are, warts and all (or even all warts) and naked as a jaybird for everyone to see. But Donald Trump did just that. In those first 47 minutes and eight seconds, he undressed in front of America. And nearly four years later, it’s worth looking back to grasp just how clearly his future presidency could be viewed in that first naked moment of moments.

King Toot

In a sense, all you needed to know was this. In that announcement speech, it took him barely two minutes to make it to the Mexican border, where he remains today. Nor should it have taken long for any viewer to grasp a few other things about him: he wasn’t a man for scripts, but was a man for insults; the Trump brand was far more crucial to him than the American one; he wouldn’t just interrupt you or anyone else, but also himself; he was ready to use blunt, everyday language never before associated with presidential candidates, no less presidents, in public (“They talked about environmental, they talked about all sorts of crap that had nothing to do with it”); there were no claims too big (or false) for him to make, especially when it came to himself and his effect on the world; he had already perfected his own unique version of incoherence, or stream-of-consciousness speaking, into a vibrant art form (that, in another sense, couldn’t have been more coherent); and he had an ego, invariably on display, as big as… well, not just the Ritz but perhaps his then-still-under-construction Trump International Hotel just down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House — and all of that was obvious even before he mentioned that “great, great wall” of his.

Despite an already existing following, thanks to his promotion of the Obama “birther” conspiracy theory, his adoring base did not yet exist. For him, however, it already did. It was, you might say, born ahead of its time. His first two words in that speech were “Wow. Whoa.” His reference point: the crowd of hired actors in front of him. “That is some group of people. Thousands.” Of them, he would momentarily say — no need to wait for the crowd controversy over his inaugural address more than a year and a half later — “There’s been no crowd like this.” But first, of course, just 20 words in, there had to be a plug for his brand. (“It’s great to be at Trump Tower.”)

And it didn’t take 30 seconds for the first insult du jour of his presidential run to make its appearance. Yep, there was that crowd, Trump Tower, and then naturally the matter of sweat and air conditioning. (“And, I can tell, some of the candidates, they went in [to announce their candidacies]. They didn’t know the air-conditioner didn’t work. They sweated like dogs… How are they going to beat ISIS?”) This was assumedly the first of what would be many insulting references to Republican senator and candidate Marco Rubio’s propensity to sweat, assumedly during his announcement of his candidacy that April. Though The Donald had barely begun, in what would be his typical fashion, he had already connected not blood, sweat, and tears, but air conditioning, sweat, and ISIS in the fashion in which he’s connected seemingly disparate things ever since.

And as Dr. Seuss might once have said: That was not all! Oh, no, that was not all! Those listening, at $50 a pop or not, quickly found themselves on the sort of high-speed train ride you can have in significant parts of the world — there are 27,000 kilometers of it China — but not in the United States, unless you’re at a Trump rally.

Just over two minutes in and the candidate-to-come had already zipped past China and Japan (“…they beat us all the time”) and arrived at that Mexican border. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists…” A minute later, he leapt to the Middle East and “Islamic terrorism,” claiming “I’m in competition with them” because, he insisted, ISIS now had the Iraqi oil that “we should’ve taken” after the invasion and occupation of that country. With that oil money, he claimed, they had built “a hotel in Syria.” (Okay, it was, in fact, in Mosul, Iraq, and they didn’t build it, they took it over, but no matter.)

A headlong dash across the Iraqi border into Iran somehow brought him to American nukes (“Even our nuclear arsenal doesn’t work”) and next thing you knew you were ripping past the U.S. gross domestic product, which, he swore, was shockingly, unbelievably “below zero.” (He evidently meant growth in the GDP, not the GDP itself, not that that was true either.) And none of it — ISIS, Iraqis, Mexicans, Muslims, failing nukes, or even sweat and air conditioners added up to much of anything compared to “a disaster called the big lie: Obamacare. Obamacare.”

And that, mind you, was just the first nine minutes of his announcement, the rest of which — from China envy to Saudi love — similarly proved a remarkably apt outline of the presidency (and president) to come. But don’t let me forget one more thing: at the heart of that speech, as at the heart of everything else in the years that followed, was you-know-who and you-know-whose brand and business.

From those first moments, Donald Trump was always King Toot (as in, tooting his own horn). Yes, in that speech he plugged making America great again, mentioning the phrase, in whole or part, nine times. And it was indeed a brilliant slogan for him to adopt.  It allowed him to say something all too real that no other politician of that moment dared to say: that America wasn’t then the most exceptional or indispensable or greatest country on Earth; in those initial moments, that is, he inaugurated himself as our first genuine declinist presidential candidate (or at least the man who could save us all from further decline).  And whether as a repeated slogan or four words on a red cap, he rang a bell, loud and clear, in the white American heartland.

Still, read that speech now and you won’t doubt for a moment that his truest slogan wasn’t MAGA at all, but MTGAAA (Make Trump Great Again and Again and Again). In that sense, at the first rally of his presidency, he offered a remarkably forthright picture of what was to come.

He billed himself as a businessman of the first order for a country desperately in need of economic resuscitation — and his would indeed be a business presidency, if you mean his (and his family’s) businesses. That first speech would be larded with references to, and praise for, those very businesses and, of course, himself. He assured listeners that he was worth no less than $8,737,540,000 (though not according to Forbes) and that he wasn’t even bragging about it. (“I’m not doing that to brag, because you know what? I don’t have to brag. I don’t have to, believe it or not.”)

It took just 12 minutes for him to make it to his golf courses and then to his most recent book. (“I have the best courses in the world… Now, our country needs… a truly great leader now. We need a leader that wrote The Art of the Deal.”) No matter that Tony Schwartz, its ghostwriter, would later denounce him as “incapable of reading a book, much less writing one.”

In fact, no subject he raised that day seemed to lack a reference to the monuments, with their giant golden letters, that he had already erected to himself. The Saudis (“I love the Saudis. Many are in this building”), the Chinese (“The biggest bank in the world is from China. You know where their United States headquarters is located? In this building, in Trump Tower. I love China”), you name it and he linked it to his businesses. In, for instance, a passing discussion of the country’s sagging infrastructure (still crumbling almost four years later) — “It’s like we’re in a third world country,” he’d say that day — he promptly focused on his hotel-to-be in the nation’s capital.  (“You know, we’re building on Pennsylvania Avenue, the Old Post Office, we’re converting it into one of the world’s great hotels. It’s gonna be the best hotel in Washington, D.C.”)

The emoluments clause in the Constitution? Don’t make me laugh. From the first second, Donald Trump couldn’t have made it clearer that, were you to vote for him, you would be putting his business and no one else’s, including yours, in the White House. Again, it was a rare moment of honesty, even if few truly took it in (or, at that moment, cared).

The Bankruptcy King in Person

All of this is, of course, ancient history, but as a document that first speech is anything but yesterday’s news. In many ways, it remains tomorrow’s headlines in a media world that, so long after, still can’t get enough of him. Had any of us truly been paying attention to more than the circus quality of the former ringmaster of The Apprentice taking his moment in the electoral sun, we might have noticed that Donald Trump was — give him credit — a strangely open book, no ghostwriters in sight. He’s remained so ever since.

That June 16th, he displayed himself nakedly — except for the orange hair — before that audience of reporters and hired actors, as well as the rest of America, and he’s never put on a stitch of clothing since. His initial TV moment was not a once-in-a-lifetime but a first-in-a-lifetime performance by a man in the process of creating a genuine what-you-see-is-what-you-get presidential run and presidency.

As I mentioned, however, there was an exception to everything I’ve written above, as there usually is to all rules in life. One thing was missing from his speech, as it would be from all of the speeches, tweets, and rallies to follow. The single hidden factor in the Trump presidency (even if, like everything else about the man from bone spurs to Roy Cohn, it was always in plain sight) contradicted his endless presentation of himself as the ultimate businessman and dealmaker for a floundering and foundering America.

Donald Trump wasn’t actually a successful businessman at all, not in the normal sense anyway. He was an economic magician (or, in classic American terms, a con man) who regularly ground business after business — a set of casinos (at a time when other casinos were thriving), hotels, an airline, and a series of other endeavors ranging from Trump Steaks to Trump Vodka to Trump University — into the dust of bankruptcy or failure. What made him such a magician was that, in case after case, his greatest “business” skill proved to be jumping ship, dollars in hand, leaving those who trusted him, had faith in him, believed in him holding the bag.

He had a history of screwing anyone who relied on him, whether we’re talking about the investors in his Atlantic City casinos or a bevy of small business types and others who worked for him — plumbers, waiters, painters, cabinet makers — and were later stiffed. In other words, Americans elected a bankruptcy king as their president and character will tell.

There really are no secrets here. In the end, Donald Trump clearly cares about nothing but himself (and perhaps his family as an extension of that self).

So read or listen to that first campaign speech again. Reintroduce yourself to Donald Trump presenting himself with naked honesty — with that single exception — and then consider the future for a moment. Whether in his first or second term (should he win again in 2020), if things start to head south economically, count on this: He’ll repeat his well-documented history and jump ship, leaving the American people, including that beloved base of his, holding the bag.

Tom Engelhardt is a co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture. He runs TomDispatch.com and is a fellow of the Type Media Center. His sixth and latest book is A Nation Unmade by War (Dispatch Books).

IMAGE: Donald Trump announcing his candidacy for president, June 16, 2015.