Donald Trump has chosen to fight the government and court every step of the way in the course of defending from the criminal elections conspiracy case he faces, and in doing so is behaving like a teenager, according to a former FBI assistant director.
Former FBI Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi appeared on The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle on MSNBC Tuesday night, and was asked about whether the former president would just ignore warnings from the judge in that case. "They're not scaring Donald Trump. He is pushing further and further, attacking her, attacking Jack Smith. It seems like he's double dog daring her to slap a gag order on him. What do you think?" the host asked.
"Yes. I think it benefits him. He very much wants to play the victim here, and there is some polling that suggests that maybe it does help him with the numbers. Look, he has not yet sat down in front of Judge Chutkan and be admonished that you will only talk about X, you will not talk about Y, we are going to preserve the evidence that you are going to receive in discovery."
He continued:
"Listen, this is all about literally potential physical harm to witnesses, to prosecutors, to jurors, in that discovery, he gets everything that the prosecution has, meaning that witness statements, who's testifying against you, who are they? What are they going to say? Here's their statement under oath. All of that is usually under the grand jury secrecy. They don't want him to spell that out for, say, many months before the trial starts, where he's intimidating witnesses, et cetera. This is all in an attempt by the Trump legal team to turn what is routine into something ridiculous."
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He added that the protective order is "not a gag order."
"Let's let the trial play out. That is all it is. The routine part of this is becoming ridiculous because you're going to see, like anybody who's raised a teenager, Stephanie knows, every single thing gets challenged. You give them an inch, they try to get an inch and a half. The judge wants this to happen on Friday, they suggested next week. This is going to go on and on and on."
