The Bulwark - Don’t Let Trump Fool You, He Was Never Exonerated

His re-election doesn’t change the damning evidence of his crimes.

Will Saletan
Dec 12, 2024



DONALD TRUMP IS TRYING TO rewrite his history as a criminal defendant.

A few days ago on Meet the Press, the president-elect said he’d been exonerated in the cases against him. “I’ve won these cases. I’ve won every one, and the rest are in the process of being won,” he declared.

Then, on Wednesday, Trump celebrated the resignation—which he had overtly encouraged—of FBI Director Christopher Wray. He claimed that under Wray, “the FBI illegally raided my home, without cause,” and “worked diligently on illegally impeaching and indicting me.”

These are lies, and Republicans are working with Trump to spread them. They want the public to believe that the feds are the bad guys, that Trump has been vindicated, and that the proper remedy for his persecution is for officials like Wray to step aside. But Trump hasn’t been vindicated. His record in court accurately reflects his corruption: thirty-four convictions in one case, four guilty pleas from co-defendants in another, two unfinished prosecutions—including the document-retention case that involved the FBI’s search of his Mar-a-Lago home—and zero acquittals.

The snow job about Trump’s exoneration is actually three overlapping arguments. The first one is that he was cleared by courts before the election. Trump has been saying this for months. “We won the big case in Florida. We’re winning them all,” he told a crowd in September. At a rally in October, he proclaimed, “I was exonerated and fully exonerated.”

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