Eugene Robinson: There’s Never Been the Kind of ‘Rampant Criminality’ Like We’ve Seen with the Trump Presidency

EXCERPT:

ROBINSON: "No, there’s never anything like this because there’s never been the kind of rampant criminality and insanity that we saw in the Trump presidency, and so a whole lot of lawyers are, you know, shopping for new yachts, I guess, because -- assuming they’re getting paid, and, like, my one question is, who’s paying this lawyer who’s running back and forth from case to case? In any event, yes, this is a level of criminality, proven criminality and increasingly punished criminality, that we’ve never seen before in our history and I hope we never see again. But it’s got to be a message to -- to anybody who gets, you know, a phone call, a subpoena from Jack Smith. Go in. Tell the truth. These claims of executive privilege have basically all been denied. That argument isn’t working. Go in, tell the truth. You’ll be a whole lot better off than if you try to stonewall, in some way, because if you do that, you’re likely to end up, you know, in jail. I mean, that’s kind of where a lot of people are headed. And look at, you know, Walt Nauta, who came in and essentially lied to Smith’s prosecutors and said he didn’t know anything about documents, and it turned out he was moving boxes of them and now, you know, he’s a criminal defendant on federal charges. So, I don’t know if people are getting this message that the thing to do is you better tell the truth and cooperate, but if they’re not, they’re going to pay the consequences."