Perhaps you’ve heard that the Supremes stopped protecting Trump and the Manhattan DA will now have access to his financial papers and tax returns? He’s not happy. Jonathan Chait summarizes his tantrum:
[T]he former president released a statement that, even by Trumpian standards, brims with anger.
Trump’s response bears every hallmark of an authentically Trump-authored text, as opposed to the knockoff versions produced by his aides. It is meandering, filled with run-on sentences, gratuitous insults, and exclamation points. Trump’s position on the tax returns rests on a series of assertions, ranging from his false claim that Robert Mueller found “No Collusion” to his insistence that he actually won the 2020 election to his extremely ironic complaint that prosecutors targeting their political opponents is “fascism, not justice.” (Trump, of course, spent his presidency publicly demanding his Attorneys General investigate his political rivals.)
The statement does contain one unambiguously true point: “This is something which has never happened to a president before.” That’s correct, because every president for the past several decades has voluntarily released his financial information. Only Trump refused.
The most conspicuous absence from Trump’s statement is any explanation as to why he has fought so hard to conceal this information, which all his predecessors willingly disclosed. He goes on at great length about the prosecutors’ motives for obtaining it without even gesturing at his own for withholding it.
Journalists have pieced together enough about various Trump financial dealings to demonstrate the high likelihood that he has committed a series of financial crimes. There is probably enough to charge him even without the tax forms. Giving Vance still more information certainly can’t help Trump.
His outpouring of rage that Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance will finally have access to his financial documents suggests the only plausible reason for Trump’s evident dismay: He is very scared of being charged with crimes.
Trump thinks everyone is as dishonest and corrupt as he is, so it makes sense that he laments the fact that no other president has been subject to the scrutiny that he has been.
No other president has ever been as corrupt and dishonest — criminal really. That’s the answer. Whether the authorities ever catch up with him is unknown. But his hysteria does indicate that he’s mighty worried about it.