‘Something is different’ as Trump faces legal battle outside of presidency: NYT

Donald Trump is facing a precarious legal situation as his classified document scandal continues to look worse with every new revelation, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.

"Mr. Trump has projected his usual bravado, and raised millions of dollars online from outraged supporters, since federal agents descended on the property more than two weeks ago and carted off boxloads of material including highly classified documents," Maggie Haberman, Glenn Thrush, and Alan Feuer reported. "But something is different this time — and the errant court filing offered a glimpse into the confusion and uncertainty the investigation has exposed inside Mr. Trump’s camp."

Late on Monday, Trump's team revealed an incriminating letter from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) sent in May.

"The documents investigation represents the greatest legal threat Mr. Trump has faced in years, and he is going into the battle shorn of the protective infrastructure and constitutional armor of the presidency. After years of burning through lawyers, he has struggled to hire new ones, and has a small group of lawyers of varying experience," The Times reported. "He is facing a Justice Department he no longer controls, run by a by-the-book attorney general, Merrick B. Garland, who has pursued various investigations into Mr. Trump methodically and quietly. Mr. Trump is serving as his own communications director and strategic adviser, seeking tactical political and in-the-moment public relations victories, sometimes at the risk of stumbling into substantive legal missteps."

Trump is going into this battle without the protections of the presidency.

"Now, as in the days after he lost the 2020 election, Mr. Trump is relying on an ad hoc team of advisers with varying levels of experience and judgment, and trying to use his political support as both a shield and a weapon to be aimed at the people investigating him," the newspaper reported. "But even as he fuels outrage in sympathetic media outlets and tries to turn attention to Mr. Biden and the so-called deep state, Mr. Trump is to some extent walking on the phantom limbs of his expired presidency, claiming executive privilege still applies to him even though he’s out of office and maintaining he had a sweeping, standing order to declassify some documents, which his aides have declined to produce."

Trump is also experiencing a shrinking inner circle.

"Mr. Trump’s court filing on Monday requesting the special master to review the seized documents was styled as a legal motion, but it sounded more like a news release drafted by Mr. Trump himself," the newspaper reported. "His concentric circles of political advisers, several layers deep when he held power, are also shrinking. Mr. Trump is thinly staffed as he sits at his private club at Bedminster, N.J., or at Trump Tower in New York City for the summer, and sometimes makes decisions without keeping his close advisers in the know."

Read the full report.

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