Trump's 'flim-flam' may not work as he finds himself in 'a position of weakness' against DOJ: biographer

Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly come under legal and financial scrutiny over the years -- only to eventually escape accountability.

But as Trump family biographer Gwenda Blair writes in an essay for Politico, he will likely not be as lucky when it comes to evading legal consequences for stashing top secret documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

Blair begins by running down all the ways that Trump has escaped unscathed again and again when his actions have come under scrutiny from the media, from banks, and from criminal investigators.

Trump's high-wire act may have reached its peak in the 1990s when his businesses were struggling and he owed creditors $1 billion -- but he managed to turn around and blame the banks for giving him so much cash.

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"The problem, he said in interview after interview, wasn’t that he’d overspent but that the banks had overlent — and the banks, unwilling to risk losing the Trump name on mortgaged properties, rolled over, lowering their interest rates and extending payment deadlines," writes Blair.

The author then documents how Trump discovered that his "flim-flam" worked in politics, as he used it to escape two impeachment convictions.

That said, Blair believes that these tricks will not work as well on the United States Department of Justice and she argues that Trump now finds himself in a "position of weakness."

"For perhaps the first time in Trump’s entire career, the M.O. that had served him so well seemed to be losing its magic," she concludes. "Maybe not for good, perhaps not even for long. The question now is whether it can save his ass yet again. I wouldn’t bet on it."

Read the whole essay here.