Donald Trump just can’t get there anymore

Trump sycophant Jim Jordan spent weeks incrementally ramping up his meddling in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s criminal prosecution of Donald Trump. And then yesterday Bragg filed suit against Jordan to shut him down.

Jordan isn’t done running his mouth about this yet. But this certainly complicates Jordan’s attempt at running interference for Trump. And in the broader picture, Bragg’s big move sends a message that there will be legal consequences for anyone who tries to improperly meddle in the criminal prosecution of Donald Trump.

You’re now seeing why Trump survived his criminal probes while he was in office, and why he won’t survive his criminal probes now. He has no way to retaliate or punish or fire any of these prosecutors, which means they can be as aggressive as they want in getting the job done.

When Trump was in office, he had the ability to fire any federal prosecutors who dared get too close too him, meaning people like Robert Mueller had to try to tiptoe around him, in a way that ended up being ineffective. And while Trump never had that kind of control over state prosecutors, the protections provided by the office of the presidency always made it very difficult for any state prosecutor to try to get to him. We now know that Trump’s DOJ pretended it was targeting Trump in the hush money scandal in order to trick the prior Manhattan DA into not building a hush money case against Trump at that time. That kind of thing can’t happen now.

None of Donald Trump’s theatrical antics while he was in office did anything to save him from his criminal scandals. His mean tweets, violent threats, and calls for “World War III” got a lot of headlines back then, but they were ineffective as legal stunts. It was only ever the office itself that protected Trump from prosecution. Now that he has no such protection, he’s left with nothing but ineffective stunts, and that’s why prosecutors are able to eat him alive for his crimes.