Donald Trump ought to report his latest pending indictment as an in-kind campaign contribution.
An in-kind contribution is when a thing of value is given or loaned to influence a federal election.
Giving a storefront for headquarters to a candidate would be an in-kind contribution, for instance. It is a thing of value.
Sometimes it is better than cash.
The latest thing of “value” granted Trump is the overwhelming amount of media attention he is getting related to the letter he received from the Justice Department last Sunday.
Trump is probably better known around the world than Joe Biden.
The letter informed Trump that he is a target of the department’s investigation into efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, an election that Trump maintains was “rigged.”
Such a letter is an indication that Democrat headhunter Jack Smith, the special counsel, will seek to indict Trump any day now.
The charges could include conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding, which was the certification by the U.S. Senate of President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory, as well as the related Jan. 6 Capito riots.
This will be the Biden administration’s second federal indictment of the former president who also happens to be the expected Republican candidate to challenge Biden for re-election in 2024.
The first was Trump’s indictment on federal charges of storing boxes of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago home he allegedly was not supposed to have.
It is like the boxes of classified documents that Biden had stored in separate locations, including in the garage of his Delaware home.
However, given the two- tiered system of justice that has developed under the Democrats and the Biden administration, Biden is not expected to be charged with anything.
It is Trump they want to see campaigning from a prison cell, not Joe Biden. Biden has enough to do to keep son Hunter Biden from doing time.
Trump is also facing legal action in New York as well as an election interference probe in Georgia.
But each time the Biden-controlled Justice Department and the FBI go after Trump its stock goes down and Trump’s goes up.
The more Biden uses Attorney General Merrick Garland to destroy Trump, the stronger Trump gets. Of the pair, it is Garland who looks like the deer caught in the headlights, not Trump.
As Friedrich Nietzsche once observed, “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” That’s Trump.
In the process the Biden administration has done something that was thought impossible. By hounding Trump to keep him from running for President, Biden has made Donald Trump a victim.
And Trump, who relishes the role, is banking on victimhood to help him. That is why he disclosed the existence of the target letter on this Truth Social platform before Smith or Garland could leak it to the Washington Post, their favorite news outlet.
The move gave Trump the opportunity to put his spin on the pending indictment before Smith or Garland could.
And true to form, Trump called the probe “a witch hunt.”
“This witch hunt is all about election interference and a complete and total weaponization of law enforcement,” he said.
Trump has a point and a growing number of people beyond his base of support agree with him.
Never in the history of the country has a president sought to send his predecessor to prison, not to mention that his predecessor is the leading candidate to defeat him in the next election.
That is something that takes place in Third World countries, not in the greatest democracy in history.
Trump is no saint. The world knows that. Neither is Joe Biden.
Unlike Joe Biden, Trump was never on the payroll of the Chinese Communist Party, or benefited from money Hunter Biden strong armed from China, Ukraine, and Romania and who knows where else.
Trump was an unpredictable but effective president. He could be one again.
He doesn’t deserve what Biden is doing to him; nobody does.
Biden and the Democrats are turning the country into a shabby banana republic.
Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.
