He has made a lot of changes in judicial and police posts to people he likes or follow his commands. And he is the fucking president, so what is someone realistically going to do to stop him.
He could modify the files, release them and get a massive popularity boost for being honest.
He could destroy the files and continue saying they never existed. This option seems a little too far fetched but still a possibility considering his overconfidence.
He’s already trying to say they never existed. But then you have his team mentioning it’s on her desk on live TV.
We have pictures of him hanging out. There are flight logs putting them in places. There is damning testimony in the public sphere right now implicating him. It doesn’t seem to be enough.
His name being in a little black book is not going to be enough. Honestly, anything short of a video of him doing unspeakable things first person is probably not going to be enough to change anyone’s mind.
Even that video would be brushed off as “fake news” or a “deep fake”.
I’m a bit more hopeful that this situation might finally open people eyes to this scumbag. For me, it seems he’s dug his own grave since he hyped up that he would release this document and it’s importance so hard that everyone expected him to release it. Of course, when he u-turned so hard that he claimed it didn’t exist his base does seem to have realised this hypocrisy. I’m hopeful that once it is released and people see his name in it (at least I assume his name is in it, why else would he not release it?) then maybe he will get a big backlash.
That said, I also think there is a 50% chance that once the list gets released people may just shrug and move on. Like you said, there is other evidence they were best mates but since that came out through the courts his supporters don’t believe it to be true/damning enough. I’m sure there will be plenty of names he can shout from the rooftops to distract people. Maybe he even drops more tariffs to add to the distraction. Maybe fox news happens to not mention if he is in the list and people don’t bother to look at any other source.