The last week in August is usually a sleepy time in America, news-wise. A gigantic blanket of heat settles over the country, driving everyone inside, or to beaches and lakeside retreats. Congress is in recess with the president typically vacationing somewhere that features refreshing breezes if not cool temperatures; cable news anchors have retreated to their second homes in the mountains or by the seaside; even newspapers tend to take the slow-news days to run culture features on trendsetters and hip designers who have set the looks everyone will be sporting in the fall.
But none of that holds true when the disrupter in chief is facing investigations in multiple states and by the federal government itself that could land him in criminal court, and maybe even in jail. The former president, who throughout the past week had his lawyers refer to him as "President Trump" and "the President" in legal papers filed on his behalf in Florida, is facing a lawsuit in New York that could disassemble and fine out of existence his business, the Trump Organization; an investigation by prosecutors in Georgia for attempting to overturn the 2020 election results in that state (which he lost); and an investigation by the Department of Justice into his handling of official documents and national defense information that he spirited away to Mar-a-Lago when he left the White House and then refused to return to the National Archives over a period of almost 18 months.
