Long-time readers will recall that I predicted former President Trump would flee the country either prior to or shortly following the transfer of office from himself to President-elect, at the time, Biden.<\/p>\n
It didn’t happen.<\/p>\n
But the rapidly worsening situation in Russia, consequential to Putin’s disastrous invasion of Ukraine, just now struck me as denying<\/strong> former President Trump a plausible refuge in case his situation goes rapidly south. At the very least, the shortages and social unrest appearing in Russia would be unappealing to the fastidious Trump. If Putin is ousted, or even passes away, Trump’s probably most important protector would be gone.<\/p>\n And is the former President’s situation dire? From a response<\/a> by the committee investigating the January 6th insurrection to being sued by Trump’s supposed lawyer, John Eastman:<\/p>\n Critically for this case, an in camera [i.e., in private] review of the documents is warranted when the party seeking production has provided \u201ca factual basis adequate to support a good faith belief by a reasonable person that in camera review of the materials may reveal evidence to establish the claim that the crime-fraud exception applies.\u201d United States v. Zolin, 491 U.S. 554, 572 (1989) (citation omitted). That standard has plainly been met here. As discussed in the Background section above, evidence and information available to the Committee establishes a good-faith belief that Mr. Trump and others may have engaged in criminal and\/or fraudulent acts<\/strong>, and that Plaintiff\u2019s legal assistance was used in furtherance of those activities. Accordingly, this Court should conduct an in camera review of the documents to determine whether the crime-fraud exception applies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Bold mine. Worse yet for the former President, extremely serious charges are now being brought against arrestees of the January 6th insurrection, and one guilty plea, for seditious conspiracy<\/em>, has already been extracted:<\/p>\n Jan 6 defendant Josh James signs plea deal saying:<\/p>\n "(Stewart) Rhodes instructed James &..conspirators to be prepared, if called upon, to report to the White House grounds to secure the perimeter & use lethal force if necessary against anyone who tried to remove President Trump" pic.twitter.com\/kBkKP9y3zk<\/a><\/p>\n — Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) March 3, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n