Trump just lashed out at Hillary in pathetic, transparent attempt to distract from his own legal crisis

It’s unmitigated hubris and gall. and it’s scarcely believable that he’d have the nerve or stupidity to do it, but President Trump sent a tweet this afternoon that hypocritically attacked the Clintons over corruption involved with their charitable foundation, just two days after a New York State judge ruled that a lawsuit filed by New York’s Attorney General that named the president and his three eldest children as defendants in a massive fraud scheme involving his own Trump Foundation can proceed.

Trump is lashing out at the Clintons not just because it’s become so habitual that he can’t bring himself to stop or because he believes that if he can’t have a charitable foundation to skim from then no one else should be able to run a legitimate charity.

No, it turns out that Bill Clinton played a major role in Justice Saliann Scarpulla’s decision that the case against a sitting president can proceed in state court, citing the Supreme Court’s 1997 ruling on Paula Jones’ sexual harassment lawsuit against former president Clinton as precedent.

“Allowing this action to proceed is entirely consistent with the Supreme Court’s holding in Clinton v. Jones that the President of the United States is ‘subject to the laws for his purely private acts,'” Scarpulla wrote.

New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood praised the decision as a victory for the rule of law in a case that charges the Trump family with ignoring the rules governing charities and using the foundation’s money as their personal piggy bank.

“The Trump Foundation functioned as little more than a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump’s business and political interests. We welcome Justice Scarpulla’s decision, which allows our suit to move forward,” Underwood said in a statement.

Trump, caught up in the crosshairs of the Mueller investigation, is apparently seething over his legal problems, having been disabused of the notion that being elected president amounted to receiving an automatic “get out of jail free” card.

His inference that the drop in donations to the Clinton Foundation proves that the Clintons were trading favors for donations and profiting from the transactions is yet another case of Trump assuming that everyone else is as crooked as he is and serves as a virtual admission of his own malfeasance in misusing his Trump Foundation’s funds to finance his campaign and to purchase a large portrait of himself to display at his golf club.

While Trump provides a quote from Andrew McCarthy (the conservative National Review columnist, not the Brat Pack actor) that accuses Hillary Clinton of abusing her tenure as Secretary of State to benefit her foundation, the truth of the matter is that despite multiple investigations, no evidence of any wrongdoing could be discovered.

Unlike the Trump Foundation, which was dissolved by the president when he took office under a cloud of so many investigations that it fills an entire Wikipedia page, the Clinton Foundation, despite also being subject to intense scrutiny, was rated four out of four stars by the Charity Navigator watchdog group and received an “A” rating from another organization, CharityWatch.

With the walls closing in on Trump and his family’s criminal behavior, it’s unsurprising that he would lash out at a familiar enemy. Unfortunately, his ire is misdirected since it’s obvious that the president’s biggest enemy is himself and his own selfish and corrupt behavior.

If only he could accept responsibility for it. Hopefully, NY Attorney General Underwood and Special Counsel Robert Mueller will help assign that responsibility to him whether he wants it or not.

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Original reporting by Shannon Van Sant at NPR and by David A. Fahrenthold at The Washington Post.

Vinnie Longobardo

is the Managing Editor of Washington Press and a 35-year veteran of the TV, mobile, & internet industries, specializing in start-ups and the international media business. His passions are politics, music, and art.