Trump’s Worst Nightmare and Karma

How Trump Survived Decades of Legal Trouble: Deny, Deflect, Delay, and Don’t Put Anything in Writing

BY BRIAN BENNETT 
TIME MAGAZINE

SEPTEMBER 21, 2022

“Nearly fifty years ago, Donald Trump learned the legal strategy that would repeatedly get him out of tight legal jams.

It was 1973 and the Justice Department had just filed a civil rights lawsuit against Trump and his father Fred Trump. The complaint alleged that the Trumps and their company, which managed some 14,000 apartments in Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island, had violated the Fair Housing Act by systematically flagging the applications of Black renters and steering them away from available units.

To push back, the Trumps hired the famously combative Roy Cohn—Senator Joseph McCarthy’s chief counsel during the 1950s Red Scare hearings—and sued the Justice Department for $100 million, claiming defamation. The Trumps settled the case two years later, agreeing to a consent decree that included giving a weekly list of vacancies to the New York Urban League. Trump later boasted that he ended up “making a minor settlement without admitting guilt.”

That early entanglement with the Justice Department drove home to Trump key lessons he’s carried with him through five decades of lawsuits and tax challenges, two impeachments and now, more legal investigations than any other former President has ever faced.”

https://time.com/6215419/trump-legal-trouble-key-strategies/