…While the committee might be able to show that Trump was repeatedly warned his rhetoric was untrue, it may be more difficult to prove that Trump believed those warnings — a potentially important step to establishing that Trump acted corruptly and broke the law.
“To some extent his craziness is his best defense,” said former federal prosecutor Randall Eliason. “The fact that he often appears to actually believe some of this stuff could cut in his favor when it comes to a criminal case, where prosecutors would have to show corrupt or fraudulent intent.”
…
[Jason] Miller has told others privately that Trump repeatedly rejected such briefings and was “never going to give it up.” … Legal experts said it might be difficult to prove in a courtroom that Trump acted with criminal intent if Trump was persuaded of his own falsehoods.
IANAL but I am wondering if this will go into the books as the “high-on-one’s-own-farts” defense. Perhaps, if nothing else, even a “not guilty” verdict would officially establish that Trump was high on his own farts. Unfortunately, it might not make any difference to voters who are also high on Trump’s trumps.
[emphasis mine]
Any prosecutor worth their salt should be able to get him to reveal it’s all part of his act. His ego seems to be too large to resist being bated into demonstrating the scheming, greed, and craftiness behind what he says and does. That’s why getting him on the stand should be part of the goal.
This should never be a question, legally. If necessary, play back all the times 45 asserted his own genius and stability. Play back all the times his own team defended his unquestionable intelligence and dignity. Play back all the times Fox News positioned him(and continues to do so) as the only hope of a failing country.
For the kicker, play back his reaction to the initial briefing on COVID, where he talks about how dangerous and deadly it is, in juxtaposition to his public statements the next day about how it’s no big deal.
That last one is like showing a defendant in the courtroom in casts and crutches doing somersaults on the way in from the parking lot.
The sentencing guidelines suggested a prison term of 41 to 51 months. Prosecutors advised Lamberth to impose 46 months. Wilson’s lawyer, Charles Peterson, asked Lamberth to go below the guideline range. Instead, Lamberth went to the top of the range, only the second time a judge has gone above the government’s recommendation out of the 10 felony sentencings so far.
Later that January, the Washington Postrevealed that she had also been agitating about Trump’s loss on a private Listserv, Thomas Clerk World, which includes former law clerks of Justice Thomas’s. The online discussion had been contentious. John Eastman, a former Thomas clerk and a key instigator of the lie that Trump actually won in 2020, was on the same side as Ginni Thomas, and he drew rebukes.
Good. This “guilty on all counts” verdict is the reason most of the defendants have taken plea deals instead. Let’s hope it sets the tone for the rest of the trials to come.
ETA: Here’s an interesting angle to the whole “trial by jury” thing for Capitol rioters:
It took two days to seat a jury made up of Washington, D.C. residents. Many potential jurors said they lived or worked near the Capitol building - the scene of multiple crimes in this case - or even knew Capitol Police officers who were injured that day, which complicated jury selection. Judge Dabney Friedrich sought jurors who could keep an “open mind,” despite anything they had heard before. The jury ultimately included employees of NASA and the Department of Defense, as well as a public school maintenance supervisor.
D.C. isn’t that big (it’s the 20th largest city in the United States) and there may be a lot more of these trials yet to come. Finding jurors who don’t have any personal connection to the events of January 6 is almost certainly going to get harder and harder as time goes on. So any defendant who chooses to take their case to court isn’t likely to find a lot of sympathetic ears in the jury box.
