Legally, It’s Been A Rough Few Days In Trumpworld—A Timeline

Topline

While most attention may have been focused on the FBI’s Monday evening search at Mar-a-Lago, the past few days have seen a stunning series of legal setbacks and developments for former President Trump and those in his orbit.

The FBI searched former president Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate on Aug. 9, reportedly as part of an … [+] investigation into whether he took classified records from the White House to his Florida residence.

AP Photo/Lynne Sladky

Timeline

Monday, Aug. 8, 6:51 p.m.Former president Trump announced that the FBI, in what he called “political persecution,” had raided his home at Mar-a-Lago in Florida in connection with an investigation into documents that should have been turned over to the National Archives when Trump left office.

Monday, Aug. 8, 10:55 p.m.Reuters reported that Matthew DePerno, the Trump-endorsed presumptive Republican nominee in Michigan’s attorney general race, was allegedly implicated in a scheme to tamper with voting machines while trying to uncover evidence to overturn the 2020 election results — a charge, brought by Michigan’s current Democratic attorney general, that a representative for DePerno’s campaign called “an incoherent liberal fever dream of lies.”

Tuesday, Aug. 9, morningLawyers representing Trump’s 2016 campaign announced in a legal filing that all campaign staff would be released from non-disclosure agreements they signed, a year after a suit by former campaign staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman allowed her to break free from her NDA.

Tuesday, Aug. 9, 1 p.m.A Georgia judge ruled that Trump attorney Rudolph Giuliani must testify in person for the Fulton County district attorney’s investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state, something Guiliani had attempted to delay, citing health problems.

Big Number

36: that’s the number of active investigations into, lawsuits against and other legal matters involving Donald Trump and his business, according to Forbes’ tracker. They include his efforts to look into his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection, suits against social media companies for banning him and whether his business inflated its properties’ values for economic gain.

Contra

Even as a blizzard of legal action surrounds the former president and those around him, Trump-aligned candidates are still scoring wins in GOP primaries in states all over the country. On Tuesday night, for example, Trump’s pick for Senate won in Connecticut, his pick for governor won in Wisconsin, and a six-term Washington congresswoman who voted for Trump’s impeachment lost her race for reelection. A week earlier, Arizona voters backed a full slate of election-denying, largely Trump-endorsed candidates in races for Senate, House, governor, secretary of state and attorney general, even as an impeachment-supporting Michigan congressman was ousted in his primary by another Trump endorsee.

Crucial Quote

In a statement posted on Truth Social Wednesday morning, Trump blasted the various investigations into him in his explanation for why he would invoke the Fifth Amendment in the New York AG case: “I once asked, ‘If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?’ Now I know the answer to that question. When your family, your company, and all the people in your orbit have become the targets of an unfounded, politically motivated Witch Hunt supported by lawyers, prosecutors, and the Fake News Media, you have no choice. If there was any question in my mind, the raid on my home, Mar-a-Lago, on Monday by the FBI, just two days prior to this deposition, wiped out any uncertainty.”