TAKING DOWN TRUMP: 12 Rules for Prosecuting Donald Trump by Someone Who Did It Successfully

TAKING DOWN TRUMP: 12 Rules for Prosecuting Donald Trump by Someone Who Did It Successfully
TRISTAN SNELL
Melville House
$27.99 hardcover, available tomorrow

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: A former prosecutor provides an essential guide to ensuring that Donald Trump—and other oligarchs of his ilk—no longer beat the rap and face serious jail time for their crimes.

For a half-century Donald Trump has evaded justice. Now he finally faces trials for his lies, cons, and misdeeds—but many fear Trump will never face any real consequences. Can prosecutors and litigants ever hold the powerful accountable? Or is our system so broken that some people are now above the law?

In TAKING DOWN TRUMP Tristan Snell argues that Donald Trump can be defeated—and shares the secrets for how to beat him.This is the first book ever from a prosecutor who defeated Snell led the prosecution of Trump University, resulting in a game-changing $25 million settlement that was Trump’s first major legal loss and still the largest ever, getting thousands of victims their money back.

Here you’ll learn the 12 rules for how to beat Trump—and how some prosecutors and litigators are following this playbook, while others failed, can voters and activists hold prosecutors accountable? How do you persevere against all the stonewalling and counterattacks? How do you get a key figure to cooperate and cough up critical evidence?

Snell faced this problem with Trump University, but with one question, he got the evidence and broke open the case. How did he do it? Whether you’re a concerned citizen, a lawyer or prosecutor, or an activist or advocate, Snell shows how America’s systems can still work to bring even the richest and most powerful to justice, and why those systems are worth preserving and improving. Ultimately, this is a roadmap for how America can begin to escape Trump’s wilderness of fraud and fascism.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I have seldom wanted to read a book more than I wanted to read this one. It is no secret that, since 2016, I have opposed 45 and his MAGAt cultists being in power, dismantling and corrupting the systems of justice...flawed as they unquestionably are...in pursuit of permanent power for their repugnant, regressive, evil system of oligarchic fascism.

What I hoped to find was a source of hope for our collective future. What I got was a roadmap for getting to the better, more just future I believe we all deserve. So this read overdelivered on my expectations.

The rules themselves are not so much the focus of the read, for me personally, anyway. I needed this read as a reminder that, in spite of triumphalist media coverage (The New York Times newsletter last week headlining what 45’s second-term agenda *is*, not would be, is my latest example), there are those in position to defeat the horrible wretch at his con-man worst, using legal, honest, above-board means to do it.

At every step, every rule, I paused to appreciate Author Snell’s clarity, concision, and fervor. No words wasted in self-congratulation. No fancy rhetorical flourishes to show off his cleverness. The author must, of necessity, throw at you a large legal vocabulary. No one can tell this story without doing that very thing. What he does is explain it as we go along: Simple, direct prose clarifications, telling what his methods were that he used to hand the rotter whose vile education scam he took down entirely his first-ever serious, consequential legal defeat. I was blissed out as I read his repeatable roadmap to defeating the entire edifice of illegality that prior prosecutors had failed to do.

Since it worked before, I am heartened when I see similar steps being taken now by other prosecutors. I cringe when I see evidence that they have fallen into the traps Author Snell points out. I pray like Hell that this book, or at least its ideas, have made it onto the radar of each and every prosecutor pursuig justice against 45 and his MAGAt followers in each and every dark, unswept corner of US democracy where we know they are.

As citizens and as readers, we should all take in these clear-eyed, aphorism-ready rules, and run with them...most especially Rule #6, Play the Long Game: Fight the Fight on Statutes of Limitations. The analysis of the largely successful strategy 45 has used to run down the clock on everything he possibly can, can be fought. Author Snell explains how.

This information should be of interest to all of us as we watch the same playbook being used right this minute. It should also be of interest to all of us who resist the status quo as abused by the very rich and very powerful to get their profits ever higher. The techniques Author Snell used are repeatable, expandable, and very usable in all our advocacy efforts.

I know most do not like to think about hard subjects, but they will be there whether one thinks about them or not. The question you can affect is not whether they are there, but how you can best resolve, or partly resolve, or contribute to resolving them. Reading TAKING DOWN TRUMP: 12 Rules for Prosecuting Donald Trump by Someone Who Did It Successfully will equip you to make a positive contribution to resolving them, not merely enduring the results of inattention and inaction.