Trump gives and takes

By HERB BOYD Special

to the AmNews

While former President Donald Trump spent last weekend bashing Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg was reportedly about to begin presenting testimony to a grand jury about Trump’s effort to pay off the adult film star Stormy Daniels before his election victory in 2016. According to several reports, Bragg recently empaneled the grand jury and will soon be presenting evidence.

Trump faces another legal battle in Georgia, where an Atlanta-area D.A. is weighing a grand jury’s report on him and his allies who sought to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

The D.A. in Georgia may have an easier road to conviction than Bragg’s, which will largely rely on testimony from Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen, who made the payment to Daniels and has pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the hush-money gambit.

In addition to these legal threats, Trump is encumbered by his retention of classified documents and the charges of rape by E. Jean Carroll. None of this has deterred his attacks, including a lawsuit filed on Monday against reporter Bob Woodward and his publisher, Simon & Schuster.

The lawsuit against Woodward is for a little less than $50 million, based on the potential sales from the audio book “The Trump Tapes.” Trump charges that he did not agree to Woodward’s publishing tapes of their conversations as an audio book.

The 20 interviews Woodward conducted with Trump were “a passport to the heart of darkness,” of Trump’s presidency, said the Guardian newspaper.

Woodward, who also wrote three print versions about Trump and his administration, and his publisher issued a joint statement calling the lawsuit “without merit.” They promise to “aggressively defend against it.”

What all of this amounts to is nothing more than Trump clamoring for attention as he provides momentum to his bid to return to the Oval Office.