After former president Donald Trump last week suggested that the head of our country’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, might deserve the death penalty, the general had to expand security measures for his family to 24 hours a day.

Backdropping this potential incitement to harm by some deranged individual, he faces a total of 91 felony charges in four criminal cases, which include 44 federal charges and 47 state felony charges.

If it were just several such indictments, one might reasonably suspect a political conspiracy was in play — but 91?

The most serious federal counts are the ones related to obstruction, which are punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

Then in New York last week his business enterprise was found guilty of decades of fraud, which cancels its business certification in the state and could lead to receivership judgments or liquidations of a number of its properties.

Among the charges in the judge’s ruling was the hyperinflation in the value of his golf courses, hotels, home at Mar-a-Lago (and his three-floor penthouse in New York, which he claimed was 30,000 square feet, but is 10,000) on filed financial statements, to gain advantage in loan transactions with banks.

Yet despite all this, Trump leads the Republican field of candidates for the presidency by over 40 points, and in recent polls is in a tie with Joe Biden to be our country’s next president.

I can only think of Maya Angelou’s words here, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.”

Paul Baribault, Lewiston

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