Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Constitutional Issues Freedom of speech

Trump learned early in his private-sector career that it is sometimes more advantageous to break the law and dare someone to call you out than to follow it—and that even if you get caught, the penalty is often a fine dwarfed by the upside of the infraction. He brought that philosophy to the White House, where he encountered rules that were even less enforceable. Trump’s White House lawyers repeatedly warned him about the legal requirement to save documents, just as they warned him about other possible violations of the law, but he had something more powerful than an attorney’s knowledge of the law: the knowledge that it didn’t matter.