The very convenient personal reason why Trump actually wants to run in 2024

Donald Trump can no longer blast endorsements, commands, attacks, or threats to his 80 million Twitter followers. There are no reporters standing ready to broadcast his every word to the world, no press secretary available to communicate his message at a moment’s notice. 

Despite his best efforts, including fomenting the first-ever coup attempt by a president in US history, he’s been cast out of the Oval Office. He’s been denuded of presidential immunity while under two separate criminal investigations. And his successor — the man he once derided as “Sleepy Joe” — is pushing forward with his own agenda, buoyed by approval ratings well north of anything Trump himself achieved in office. 

Even the 6-3 conservative Supreme Court Trump once touted as his greatest legacy in office has turned heel against him, first by refusing to hear his myriad challenges to the 2020 election’s legitimacy, then delivering yet another insult on Monday by denying his last-ditch bid to keep his tax returns and other financial records — the holiest of holies for his legal and political nemeses — out of the hands of a New York City grand jury. 

Yet the most recent addition to the ranks of former president (albeit one who refuses to acknowledge that status) is eschewing the quiet disengagement from politics that has long been expected from erstwhile residents of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. According to reporting by Axios, Trump is laying the groundwork to keep the Party of Lincoln under his thumb for the foreseeable future, beginning with a Sunday “show of force” address to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC.)

In a phone interview, a source close to the former president largely confirmed Monday’s report, calling Trump’s upcoming speech a “display of dominance” in which he’ll reclaim his status as the ultimate outsider and remind the GOP of his kingmaker status, all while going on the attack against enemies old and new, real and perceived. 

Trump’s plans, they said, are largely driven by his desire for revenge against Republican members of Congress who have either voted to impeach or remove him from office, publicly criticized him, or given aid and comfort to those who’ve done either. They added that the former president also wants to recast himself as a “once and future president” by teasing a 2024 run. 

It’s that last agenda item that could prove most important to twice-impeached ex-president, particularly in the wake of Monday’s news that the Supreme Court would not hear a final appeal by Trump’s attorneys, who had sought to keep his financial records from a grand jury’s critical eyes. 

According to several former aides and confidantes, Trump will be driven to at least continue to tease a 2024 run because it will enable him to claim that any moves to prosecute him by state or federal prosecutors is nothing more than an attempt to keep him from reclaiming the presidency.

When asked about the validity of such a theory via text message, Trump adviser Jason Miller replied with a lengthy statement issued in response to the high court’s ruling, in which the former president described New York County District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr’s probe as “a continuation of the greatest political Witch Hunt in the history of our Country” and a “fishing expedition” that is “all Democrat-inspired in a totally Democrat location, New York City and State” and meant to “stop the almost 75 million people…who voted for [him] in the election”.

“The new phenomenon of ‘headhunting’ prosecutors and AGs — who try to take down their political opponents using the law as a weapon — is a threat to the very foundation of our liberty. That’s what is done in third world countries…That’s fascism, not justice — and that is exactly what they are trying to do with respect to me,” he said. 

While Trump is reportedly under investigation for trying to bully Georgia’s Secretary of State into overturning election results that handed the state’s electoral votes to now-President Biden, it is Vance’s investigation that appears to be the most immediate threat to him. 

Last week,The New York Times reported that his office had brought on a veteran ex-prosecutor, Mark Pomerantz, as a special assistant district attorney to assist in examining the Trump Organization’s finances. The former federal prosecutor and one-time Supreme Court clerk, who once oversaw major securities fraud and organized crime prosecutions of Gambino crime family boss John Gotti, augments a team that already includes some of the top forensic accountants in New York.

While Trump appears set to argue that any push to hold him accountable for unlawful conduct isper se illegitimate, veteran prosecutors say it is increasingly likely that he will become the first ex-president to appear in the dock as a criminal defendant. 

Glenn Kirschner, a former Assistant US Attorney in the District of Columbia who oversaw multiple racketeering cases during his tenure there, called the personnel moves “a sure sign that [Vance] is headed toward indicting Trump”.

“I don’t think Cy Vance would have spent considerable state resources to hire expert forensic accountants unless he was moving toward indictment and trial,” he said.

In a phone interview, ex-Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman expressed a similar sentiment. Now a New York-based defense attorney with the firm of Dorsey and Whitney, Akerman opined that the addition of Pomerantz to the team “means they think they’ve got something,” and suggested that prosecutors have been compiling a significant evidentiary record that goes far beyond the records Trump had been fighting to protect from view.

“They’re talking to former employees and talking to lots of people in New York… and they’ve been geared up for a while on this thing. So I think they’ve got a good indication of where they’re going,” he said, adding that the extent of the probe has been somewhat of an open secret among the New York defense bar. 

And despite the ex-president’s continuing effort to cast any investigation of him as part of a “witch hunt,” Kirschner said such arguments will be far less persuasive without the authority of the presidency behind it. 

“I think it’s a less effective formula now that he can’t abuse his office and make people’s lives miserable,” he said. “I think all of this is going to come to a very abrupt halt — not his whining and complaining and his living a life of grievance — but people paying as much attention to it or caring about the impact that might have once the first indictment drops on his head”.