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Given the circumstances, Donald Trump should probably be focused on his legal defense. He’s already been indicted twice, a third now appears inevitable, and a fourth is likely on the way. The former president clearly has an incentive to figure out how to avoid a series of felony convictions.
But that’s doesn’t appear to be the Republican’s central focus. On the contrary, instead of looking for ways to deal with his problem, Trump keeps looking for someone who might be able to get him out of his problem. Political Wire summarized the former president’s latest video on the subject.
Donald Trump released a video pleading with Congress to save him from the multiple legal battles he’s currently facing. Said Trump: “Congress, if you will, please investigate the political witch hunts against me currently being brought by the corrupt DOJ and FBI, who are totally out of control.”
The video concluded, in an apparent appeal to lawmakers, “Stop them now. Save our country.”
Obviously, the substance of Trump’s recorded message is a mess. The investigations aren’t “witch hunts”; there’s no evidence of corruption in federal law enforcement; and while the United States faces challenges, derailing the cases involving the former president would not actually “save our country.”
But Trump’s dishonesty is hardly worth mentioning. What’s more interesting is his increasingly frequent begging, which makes far less sense than he seems to realize.
Circling back to our earlier coverage, the push began in earnest in late April, when the former president’s lawyers sent a strange, 10-page letter to the House Intelligence Committee, insisting that the panel approve a “legislative solution” to prevent federal prosecutors from pursuing the case further.
The letter proposed that the Justice Department “should be ordered to stand down” — as if members of the legislative branch have the authority to direct federal prosecutors to drop a case. (They have no such authority.)
In May, the Republican reiterated the point, publishing an online tantrum in which he argued that Congress should “demand” that federal prosecutors “stop the Witch Hunt against ‘TRUMP.’” (I still don’t know why he referred to himself in third person and put his name in quotes.)
In June, as his first federal criminal indictment neared, he again looked to Capitol Hill for some kind of rescue. “REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS MUST MAKE THIS THEIR # 1 ISSUE!!!” Trump wrote.
Now it’s July, and he’s still at it.
Let’s briefly review a handful of basic details that Trump might not fully appreciate. The first is that Congress has no control over who is or isn’t indicted, and lawmakers can’t simply choose to insert themselves into active criminal investigations, at least not in a legally consequential way.
The second is that lawmakers might care, but short of defunding prosecutors — a step Trump apparently supports — it wouldn’t make much of a practical difference whether GOP lawmakers made the former president’s legal troubles “their #1 issue” or not.
The third, with Trump’s latest appeal in mind, congressional Republicans could launch more “investigations” into the ongoing investigations, but there’s no reason to think they’d uncover any wrongdoing, and possible hearings wouldn’t make the indictments disappear.
If the former president is looking for a rescue, he’ll need to look elsewhere.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.