Major newspapers are reporting that Trump and his team were "caught off guard" by the Manhattan grand jury's indictment.
I confess I was, especially after the earlier news broke that the grand jury would be taking a month off from the case. But I wasn't the target of a jury panel with indictment powers. Had I been one, I probably would have also been a trifle more nervous — more "on guard."
But this, from The Washington Post, is the strangest, more unexpected angle of the pre-indictment phase: "[Trump's] top political advisers, including Chris LaCivita and Jason Miller, had begun drafting statements to blast out and lines of attack against Bragg and Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen, thought to be one of Bragg’s key witnesses."
Why on earth would they have been drafting statements? Trump has been blithering for weeks that the Manhattan district attorney is "fake, corrupt and disgraceful," that similarly "corrupt" Democrats everywhere are out to get him, that they're terrified of his presidential candidacy and wish to end it by means most foul.
That — pure bullshit — is Trump Inc.'s already too-familiar and solitary line of defensive attack. Because he's guilty as hell. He hasn't any legal defense. He can only hope that a judge throws the rumored, 30 criminal counts out of court. Or that he gets a trial jury composed of TV Roseannes.
Hence Chris LaCivita and Jason Miller have exceptionally easy jobs: reposting Trump's temper tantrums. Next he'll swear that he'll hold his breath until it all goes away.