Has Trump Just Had the Worst Week of His Political Life?

Donald Trump has come to the end of the week in which there have been a particularly troublesome past few days for the former president, with a number of cases involving him seeing significant developments.

In the past 72 hours, Trump has seen major updates in four criminal, civil and congressional inquiries that focus on the former president.

On Wednesday, both The New York Times and The Washington Post reported on damning allegations regarding the investigation into claims that Trump mishandled classified materials the FBI seized from his Mar-a-Lago resort in August, as well as attempting to obstruct the federal attempts to seize them.

Trump is alleged to have told a valet who was working at Mar-a-Lago to move boxes of documents into a storage room at his Florida resort after the former president received a government subpoena to return them.

U.K. newspaper The Times reported that the FBI had security footage showing the aide, Walt Nauta, who worked as a valet in the Trump White House, moving the boxes from a storage room before and after the Justice Department issued the subpoena in May.

The allegations are another sign that the former president took steps to prevent federal agents from retrieving all the documents removed from the White House when he left office in January 2021.

Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told Newsweek: "Trump's words and actions are important because they establish his knowledge and intent.

"If he indeed directed employees to move boxes of documents after he received a subpoena, that establishes he knew the law and intended to violate it.

"Trump's motivation to move the boxes of documents may have been to keep the evidence of a crime closer to him and less accessible to others. He probably never thought the FBI would raid his personal residence," said Rahmani.

In a statement to The Washington Post about the Mar-a-Lago allegations, Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich said: "The Biden administration has weaponized law enforcement and fabricated a Document Hoax in a desperate attempt to retain political power.

"Every other President has been given time and deference regarding the administration of documents, as the President has the ultimate authority to categorize records, and what materials should be classified."

On the same day as the Mar-a-Lago allegations emerged, New York District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said that the former president must answer questions under oath as part of a defamation lawsuit brought by a woman who claimed Trump raped her in the 1990s.

Kaplan rejected Trump's legal team's attempts to have the deposition delayed, ruling that the former president should not be permitted to "run the clock out" regarding the claims made by magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll.

Carroll alleged Trump raped her at a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-1990s, and then defamed her character while denying it. Trump must now sit for the deposition in New York on Sunday.

Trump's legal team said that he was doing his job as then-president by denying the rape allegations, including stating Carroll is "not my type" in 2019.

In a statement Wednesday night, Trump described the suit as a "complete con job," while once again denying the rape claim because Carroll is "not my type."

On Thursday, the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack presented their final hearing, at the end of which the panel unanimously voted to subpoena the former president.

The panel also laid out further evidence in which Trump was aware he lost the 2020 Election, including privately admitting it to some close allies, but continued to push the false claim that it was rigged due to widespread voter fraud.

While announcing the plan to vote on whether to subpoena Trump, chairman Bennie G. Thompson said the committee wanted to speak to him as the panel had been "left no doubt" that the former president "led an effort to upend American democracy that directly resulted in the violence of January 6."

"He tried to take away the voice of the American people in choosing their president and replace the will of the voters with his will to remain in power," Thompson said.

"He is the one person at the center of the story of what happened on January 6. So we want to hear from him."

On Friday, Trump posted a lengthy statement accusing the January 6 panel of conducting "charade and witch hunt," while continuing to push the false claim he lost the 2020 Election.

Elsewhere on Thursday, New York Attorney General Letitia James took action to stop the former president's Trump Organization from continuing to engage in the "significant fraudulent and illegal business activity" by asking a court to freeze the company's assets.

James said in a statement that Trump Organization appears to be taking steps to restructure its business to "evade the reaches" of her office's lawsuit. In September, a new "Trump Organization II" company was registered in Delaware.

James' office is looking into allegations the family business exaggerated the value of a number of assets to the tune of billions of dollars to obtain better loans and other financial benefits.

"Since we filed this sweeping lawsuit last month, Donald Trump and the Trump Organization have continued those same fraudulent practices and taken measures to evade responsibility," James said in a statement.

"Today, we are seeking an immediate stop to these actions because Mr. Trump should not get to play by different rules."