OK, on most of the cases that have been brought against him, with the exception of the Fani Willis case in Georgia, Trump likely had easy outs on them. Meaning, most of these he could have paid far less or totally avoided charges. However, he and some incredibly bad lawyers caused these to go from minor to major issues for him. 

Nobody did this to Trump, he has done it to himself. The real debate is why did he do it to himself. My personal belief is it is just stupidity, arrogance, and a full belief that laws do not apply to him. Simple as that. 

However, some people seem to think that this is Trump's strategy, force everything into court, delay as long as you can, use his criminal behavior as a way to campaign for office. If he gets elected, he will declare himself able to commit any crime and be above the law. It's been named the "Jesse James" approach. Some think his supporters want to see him commit crimes and act above the law because they believe that shows he is some sort of strong hero. That's a really idiotic strategy if that is true, and it is costing him dearly. 

Let's just take a quick look at some of these cases:

E. Jean Carroll civil cases: This one is a hilarious comedy of errors on Trump's part. So, he sexually assaulted this woman and then continued to harass, defame/slander her. Now he loses in a jury trial, they find he did assault her, and Carroll is awarded $5 million dollars. OK, so Trump can handle this payment out of pocket and does. Still he appeals the case, because he always does. Alright, any normal person, any person with any reasonable amount of intelligence, walks away from this and waits for the appeal without further slandering the person he just lost in court to. Does Trump do this? No, of course not! He immediately starts slandering her again and again. His lawyers supposedly tell him to stop, he can't because Donald has no self-control, and what happens? She sues him again for continuing to slander her. He then hires incompetent lawyers (Alina Habba is a trainwreck who seems to think representing her client means acting just like him) to represent him, they blow the case for him in such epic fashion the jury decides to award Carroll $91 million because this is what they think it will require to get Trump to stop harassing and slandering Carroll. Does Trump shut up? NO, OF COURSE NOT! He ends up throwing Habba under the bus, for following his orders, and goes back to slandering and harassing Carroll. Wow, amazingly stupid, and all on Trump himself. Yes, he could have walked away from the whole thing for just $5 million, he probably could have just done a settlement to make the whole thing go away instead of going to court, that may have cost him less than $5 million, but did he? Nope. So, he's on the hook in that case for $100 million, he has no chance in an appeal, and he is likely going to get sued again because he keeps slandering Carroll. This situation and the money it is costing him is all his own fault. Amazingly stupid. 

New York City fraud case, civil - OK, this one was always going to cost Trump some money, because he did the crimes, they had ridiculous piles of evidence, they had parties admitting guilt. Now, what a smart person would have done was to say, "OK, I made these mistakes. I will pay for these mistakes. Let's negotiate a settlement." and his smart attorneys would have got down to brass tacks negotiating a number and agreement to get him out of it. Does this happen with Trump? OF COURSE NOT! He instead starts trying to do a cover-up, slanders and attacks prosecutors and judges and even Joe Biden who has zero to do with how Trump ran his business in New York. He tries to secretly change the addresses of his companies from New York to Florida and gets caught doing that. It is one stupid move after another by Trump and his attorneys while he parades around continuing to lie about being one of the wealthiest people on the planet. He openly lies about everything taking place, bullies his lawyers to do the same, and gets crucified in the judgement. He could have negotiated a settlement of far less and not gone to trial. Idiotic on his part and it is hard to comprehend why his lawyers went along for this ride. Nobody seems to be able to explain to Donald that his behavior is costing him a lot of money. 

Mar-a-Lago Classified Documents case, criminal - Here again, we have Trump digging his own grave. He keeps digging this hole deeper and deeper and it seems he is hoping that the corrupt judge (he appointed) overseeing this case will somehow bail him out. This case, and special prosecutor Jack Smith would not even exist if Trump just returned the classified documents he took when asked. The government threw him lifeline after lifeline, gave him break after break, just begging him to return the documents. This was all he had to do. He would not give the stuff back. Why? Because he had a plan to monetize having these classified documents. He intended to make money off of them and to potentially blackmail people in the government and potentially foreign officials with them. All Trump had to do was return the documents and he would not be charged with crimes in this case nor would Jack Smith have the case over the insurrection on January 6th against him right now. So, really, this idiotic move led to a whole bunch of criminal charges against Trump and two federal criminal cases. Nobody did this to Trump, he did it to himself. The reason Joe Biden and Mike Pence were never charged for having classified documents is they immediately cooperated and returned them. Trump tried to hide that he had them, tried to destroy evidence, erase video tape showing moving the boxes of documents, and erroneously kept claiming everything belonged to him. Plus he stunningly openly said he believed he should get paid for the classified documents. It was a WOW moment of epic proportions. Trump is correct, that it was not a crime that he took the documents, they were not going to charge him with any crimes for that. It was a crime when he would not give them back and then kept trying to hide that he had them. Not to mention he was showing them to people with no clearance to see them endangering our country and the world. Here's the thing here, his lawyers and Trump are again blundering through this case, because they do not seem to understand what he is charged with. He and his lawyers keep claiming this is about the Presidential Records Act, and it has nothing to do with that. There are no charges against him for violations of the PRA. He is being charged with obstruction and violations of the espionage act. So, if this ever gets to trial under a judge that is not corrupt, well, this looks like another certain conviction for Trump because like Alina Habba in the Carroll case, they do not even seem to comprehend or understand what they are going to trial for. 

So, there you go, Marc. Trump if he had acted intelligently and without corrupt intent, could have avoided most of what has transpired in the cases I mention above. He literally would not even know Jack Smith's name, and would not owe approaching a billion dollars for his civil crimes. He is where he is at because he acted like a total moron and his lawyers basically went along for the ride. 

So, don't fall into the trap of blaming James, or judges, or Jack Smith, or Merrick Garland, or Joe Biden for all of this. TRUMP IS RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS MESSES. He committed the crimes, could have got out of some, could have got much better outcomes for himself, but he has done the exact wrong thing, the exact thing that would screw him, at every turn. So, he screwed himself, Marc. Understanding that is very important to understanding why he finds himself owing all this cash and under all this scrutiny.