Edition · December 25, 2021

The Daily Fuckup — December 25, 2021

A quiet Christmas Day still found Trump-world managing to make noise: a fresh lawsuit against New York’s attorney general, continued fallout over the January 6 investigation, and the kind of internal movement that suggests the post-presidency legal war was not going to take the holidays off.

Christmas Day 2021 was not a blockbuster Trump-news day, but it was a consequential one for the larger story of his post-presidency: legal warfare kept grinding forward, and the political cost of January 6 kept compounding. The strongest Trump-world item on the date was the public landing of Trump’s lawsuit against New York Attorney General Letitia James, a move that tried to flip an investigation into alleged financial fraud into a grievance play about politics and harassment. That lawsuit fit a broader pattern: Trump’s response to scrutiny remained to sue, accuse, and expand the mess instead of cleaning it up. On a holiday that usually rewards silence, his orbit still managed to remind everyone why the civil and criminal calendars around him were filling up.

Closing take

The Christmas edition is thin on fresh spectacle, but not on evidence of a political operation that had become inseparable from legal exposure. Even on a day meant for peace, the Trump machine was still arguing with prosecutors, courts, and the consequences of its own conduct. That is not a holiday vibe; it is a liability profile.

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Trump Tries to Sue His Way Out of the New York Fraud Probe

★★★★☆Fuckup rating 4/5 Serious fuckup

On Christmas Day, Trump’s legal team put a fresh suit on the board against New York Attorney General Letitia James, trying to cast a long-running civil investigation as political harassment. It was a familiar Trump-world move: when the facts look bad, reframe the investigation as the crime. The problem for him is that courts do not usually confuse indignation with exoneration.

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