Legal expert on Donald Trump: this is what “will be his downfall”

Even many of Donald Trump’s biggest critics have taken to referring to him as Teflon Don, under the premise that he always ends up getting away with his crimes. What most people forget is that the original Teflon Don, crime boss John Gotti, spent the final decade of his life in prison.

One of Trump’s big mistakes in his classified document scandal is that instead of having his henchmen handle the boxes of documents so that he could ultimately claim he had no idea they’d stolen them, he reportedly resorted to rifling through the boxes of documents himself after the Feds asked for them back. This means Trump finally put his own fingerprints, literally and figuratively, on his crime spree.

Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissman tweeted this: “If you have lived your life skirting the law for decades, with no actual consequences, your belief that you are untouchable can just sometimes bite you in the rear. MAL is just that: a crime of Trump’s own singular making. And will be his downfall.”

That sounds about right. Donald Trump had multiple opportunities to avoid going down in this classified documents scandal. He could have simply not stolen them in the first place. He could have given them back as soon as the Feds asked, and claimed he didn’t realize he had them. He could have kept his hands off the documents, in order to build reasonable doubt. But instead, apparently having run out of henchmen, and desperate to somehow get back in the game, he did his own dirty work – and it will indeed be his downfall.