Similarly, it might seem like overkill to make Trump fight off four indictments related to his former presidency even as he campaigns for a second term. No other president has been indicted even once after serving in that high office. Trump claims persecution, but these cases too have all arisen from Trump’s behaving as though the rules did not apply to him, and daring authorities to act otherwise.
Most of the facts in these cases are not in dispute. Trump arranged for two former lovers to be paid off in the final days of his campaign, a violation of campaign law for which his lawyer, Michael Cohen, served a three-year sentence. Trump told Georgia’s secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes” to put him over the top in the 2020 election. Trump ordered Vice President Mike Pence not to count electoral ballots that made Joe Biden the winner, telling Pence that would be a “career killer.” Trump took classified and other documents with him when he retired to Florida, which wasn’t perhaps unusual, but when the National Archives told him to give them back, Trump refused, which was very unusual. This last is perhaps the most perfect example of Trump’s demanding special treatment and then, when denied it, playing the victim. In the end the FBI had to raid Mar-a-Lago to get the documents back, prompting Trump to complain that “these are dark times for our Nation.… Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before.” He was right; it hadn’t.
Trump’s legal troubles right now in New York State fit this pattern. Indeed, Trump has a history of getting nailed for fraud by attorneys general in New York. There was the Trump University fraud case, which settled for $25 million in 2016, and the Trump Foundation fraud case in 2018, which settled for $2 million. Judge Engoron referenced these cases in his opinion (“This is not Defendants’ first rodeo”), and factored them into his $454 judgment. He might also have mentioned a 2010 lawsuit involving the attorney general over false information that Donald Jr. and Ivanka Trump furnished to the purchasers of condominiums in Trump SoHo. That case, which was settled for an undisclosed sum, very nearly led to criminal indictments for the Trump children (who were foolish enough to discuss their deception in emails).