The Washington Post is not exactly the gold standard of truth when it comes to reporting on Donald Trump, but to me this has the ring of truth. Judge for yourself.

The story goes like this: when the documents issue came up all the way back in February 2021, Trump behaved as Trump does and got his dander up. He wanted to keep the documents and decided to fight the request.

This, at least, is obviously true. He was asked to return the documents and he refused to do so, arguing that he had a right to keep them.

What follows of course is the important part: did Donald Trump have an opportunity to avoid landing in legal peril, and if so did he follow bad advice that landed him in the hot seat? The Washington Post story suggests he did. I am inclined to believe them in this case.

"Trump time and again rejected the advice from lawyers and advisers who urged him to cooperate and instead took the advice of Tom Fitton, and a range of others who told him he could legally keep the documents and should fight the Justice Department"
https://t.co/63yapczhdx

— Joel Weingart (@JoelWeingart_) June 15, 2023

One of Donald Trump’s new attorneys proposed an idea in the fall of 2022: The former president’s team could try to arrange a settlement with the Justice Department.

The attorney, Christopher Kise, wanted to quietly approach Justice to see if he could negotiate a settlement that would preclude charges, hoping Attorney General Merrick Garland and the department would want an exit ramp to avoid prosecuting a former president. Kise would hopefully “take the temperature down,” he told others, by promising a professional approach and the return of all documents.

But Trump was not interested after listening to other lawyers who urged a more pugilistic approach, so Kise never approached prosecutors, three people briefed on the matter said. A special counsel was appointed months later.

This has the ring of truth because any lawyer worth his salt would advise his client to avoid legal jeopardy if at all possible. Obviously, Donald Trump’s freedom from prosecution is, by any measure, far more important than his desire to keep documents that in all likelihood he would never review again.

We can’t know if, by the fall of 2022 Donald Trump could have actually persuaded the Attorney General to forego prosecution–now we will never know–but clearly, it would have been much more difficult for the Biden Administration to make its case if Trump had relented and returned the documents, or at least negotiated.

Instead, he did what Donald Trump always does, even when it makes no sense to do so: fight. Trump just likes to fight, and he simply cannot abide any appearance that he is losing.

Since the National Archives first asked for the return of presidential documents in Trump’s possession in February 2021 and until a grand jury issued its indictment this month, Trump was repeatedly stubborn and eschewed opportunities to avoid criminal charges, according to people with knowledge of the case, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal details. They note that Trump was not charged for any documents he returned voluntarily.

Interviews with seven Trump advisers with knowledge of the probe indicate he misled his own advisers, telling them the boxes contained only newspaper clippings and clothes. He repeatedly refused to give the documents back, even when some of his longest-serving advisers warned of peril and some flew to Mar-a-Lago to beg him to return them.

When Trump returned 15 boxes early last year — leaving at least 64 more at Mar-a-Lago — he told his own advisers to put out statements to the National Archives and to the public that “everything” had been returned, The Washington Post has previously reported. But he quietly kept thousands of documents.

This, too, has the ring of truth to me, because it is utterly consistent with how Trump has acted in the past. Trump has a uniquely Trumpian version of reality–one in which his desires and reality always match. It’s hard to argue that this tendency has not served him well over time–he did, after all, win an election for president despite almost nobody believing he could, including most of his voters and advisors.

But that same tendency has created more than a little trouble for the man–he stupidly got into a fight about the crowd size at his inaugural on his first day in the office for no other reason than to satisfy his ego, and his claims were manifestly false. He just couldn’t let it go.

There is no doubt in my mind that throughout this controversy many advisors would have argued he should just put it behind him and give up the documents–the game is not worth the candle–and there is no doubt in my mind that the primary obstacle to following an obviously smart strategy was Donald J. Trump himself.

“It was a totally unforced error,” said one person close to Trump who has been part of dozens of discussions about the documents. “We didn’t have to be here.”

Trump time and again rejected the advice from lawyers and advisers who urged him to cooperate and instead took the advice of Tom Fitton, the head of the conservative group Judicial Watch, and a range of others who told him he could legally keep the documents and should fight the Justice Department, advisers said. Trump would often cite Fitton to others, and Fitton told some of Trump’s lawyers that Trump could keep the documents, even as they disagreed, the advisers said.

Again, there is no assurance that Trump would have avoided indictment if he chose the obvious strategy. Ultimate that judgment was out of his hands. But there is also no doubt that the case against Trump would have been immeasurably weakened if Trump has simply given in and then fought for the return of the documents he felt he needed.

There is no explanation that makes sense of why Trump needed all these documents. Surely many are ones to which he has a right, and pretty obviously many are ones to which he doesn’t. In a normal world, people fight these things out through a legal process that avoids the risk of criminal prosecution.

I wrote yesterday that Trump is being persecuted–in my judgment he clearly has been for 7 years by opponents who will do anything, including break the law themselves, to get him.

But I also believe that Trump has been incredibly stupid and likely broke the law, in the same manner as Hillary Clinton and likely Joe Biden did. His defense comes down to differential prosecution based on corrupt bases. Hillary got a pass, so why shouldn’t he?

That’s a very weak legal case, and it needn’t have gotten this far. There was a far easier path that would have, in the end, cost him nothing. It is hard to see what possible use Trump would have for most of those documents. He simply wanted them, and when asked to return them he did what he always does: fight.

It’s important to have leaders who are willing to take on battles that matter, especially when they matter to the people. This is a battle that means literally nothing to average Americans, and probably meant very little to Trump. What possible benefit would Trump get from keeping these documents–which as we all know were in boxes strewn around his house mostly unopened–compared to the trouble this has caused for him, his supporters, and the country as a whole?

Is Trump being treated unfairly? Sure. He has been ever since he was elected.

Was Trump in the wrong? Almost certainly so, and even if he might have a technical or legal argument, this was a monumentally stupid battle to fight.

Trump is terrible at choosing which battles to fight and which to avoid. He has absolutely zero self-control and no sense of priorities. He does what he feels like doing, no matter the cost to him or those around him. His appetite is his kryptonite.

Many of the people who just can’t stand Trump are reacting to his monumental self-regard more than his policies. His personality is large, and some love him for it as they love rock stars whose behaviors are so outrageous that they seem like demigods. Even their flaws are out of proportion compared to normal people.

But just as rock stars’ flaws–their ability to get away with things that few others do–attract some people like moths to a flame, others are repulsed at a visceral level. Throughout my life–and Trump has been a major celebrity all my life and unavoidable–I have never actually liked him as a person. I warmed up to the job he did as president and voted for him, but I also disliked him as a person. He strikes me as crude, egotistical to the point of narcissism, and morally vacuous. I don’t like how he treats others, and his demands for loyalty are never returned by him.

If Trump were a more decent person and more practical in choosing when to fight and over what, he would still be president today. If he trusted his gut less and his advisors more, he would not be in the dock.

Does Trump deserve to go to jail when so many Democrats have done the same or worse and skated? No.

Could and should he have avoided this crisis? Pretty obviously yes.

Everybody is being forced to take a stand on a controversy that never should have arisen. That is on Donald Trump.