Trump is at this point telling his people that he needs to announce his candidacy for President now so that he can avoid charges and then hold out on the legal front until winning a second term and appointing an Attorney General who will dismiss the investigation.
When Donald Trump formally declares his 2024 candidacy, he won’t just be running for another term in the White House. He’ll be running away from legal troubles, possible criminal charges, and even the specter of prison time.
In recent months, Trump has made clear to associates that the legal protections of occupying the Oval Office are front-of-mind for him, four people with knowledge of the situation tell Rolling Stone.
Trump has “spoken about how when you are the president of the United States, it is tough for politically motivated prosecutors to ‘get to you,” says one of the sources, who has discussed the issue with Trump this summer. “He says when [not if] he is president again, a new Republican administration will put a stop to the [Justice Department] investigation that he views as the Biden administration working to hit him with criminal charges — or even put him and his people in prison.”
Presidential immunity and picking his own attorney general aren’t Trump’s only reasons for running again. And as he works on another run, Trump is in a tug-of-war with leaders and operatives of his own party about when to announce, according to multiple people with knowledge of the matter.
The former president is motivated to announce early — even before Election Day 2022 — in the hopes of clearing the field of primary rivals. But GOP leaders, including some of Trump’s closest advisors, don’t want him to declare his intentions until after the midterm elections. The GOP wants to keep voters focused on President Joe Biden, rather than transforming the contest into a referendum on Trump. In recent months, Trump has reluctantly agreed to hold off, only to return shortly thereafter with threats to make an early announcement, either out of self-interest, spite, or some combination of the two.
But as Trump talks about running, the four sources say, he’s leaving confidants with the impression that, as his criminal exposure has increased, so has his focus on the legal protections of the executive branch.
It’s not just liberal wish-casters or Trump critics who are acknowledging the former president’s legal jeopardy. Trump’s teams of lawyers and former senior administration officials speak about it commonly. “I do think criminal prosecutions are possible…for Trump and [former White House chief of staff Mark] Meadows certainly,” Ty Cobb, a former top lawyer in Trump’s White House, bluntly told Rolling Stone late last month.
Trump himself seems to acknowledge potential problems. He “said something like, ‘[prosecutors] couldn’t get away with this while I was president,’” another one of the four sources recalls. “It was during a larger discussion about the investigations, other possible 2024 [primary] candidates, and what people were saying about the Jan. 6 hearings … He went on for a couple minutes about how ‘some very corrupt’ people want to ‘put me in jail.’”
The powers of the presidency would offer a welcome pause to the various civil suits and criminal investigations now hanging over Trump. It’s unclear whether the Justice Department will charge Trump in connection with fomenting the January 6 insurrection, but winning the White House would be extremely helpful to him. Department policy forbids the prosecution of a sitting president, effectively insulating Trump from any federal charges for another four years.
Trump is absolutely planning to do this as soon as he can line up the donors and the rest of the GOP to fall in line behind him. It's a race now to see who acts first, Trump, or the people prosecuting him.
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