One of the lawyers that Trump apparently interviewed yesterday was once indicted b/c the Medellin drug cartel paid him with dirty money. Charges were dropped the following year – turns out there is an exception to money laundering laws for criminal defense attorneys on the theory that it shouldn’t be illegal to be paid to be a criminal defense lawyer.
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Are you talking about the recording of him admitting that he knew the documents hadn’t been declassified and he no longer had the ability to declassify them?
I’m not certain that recording is actually relevant to the charges that were filed.
He was charged with holding onto a bunch of documents he shouldn’t have retained (or which he failed to make arrangements to retain), as well as lying and obstructing justice.
(I haven’t listened to the talking heads on the subject, however; maybe if the 31 documents listed had been declassified they wouldn’t have been verboten to retain…?)
Yeah, I expect that’s exactly what the defense will be. He declassified them in his head, so there are no documents he shouldn’t have retained. And there’s no lying or obstructing because he literally had no classified documents.
If that’s the defense, which seems likely, the recording becomes key to the prosecution, where by his own admission they weren’t declassified and by his own admission he couldn’t declassify them.
I’m expecting that there is a consistent inconsistency in what he was telling various parties that were tracking these documents. Similar to telling banks your properties were worth millions because you want a loan while telling the IRS they are worthless to avoid taxes.
His public statements of course are all over the place since that is what he does to cover his tracks for his cult.
Agree with your logic.
He changes his “story” depending on who he is talking to.
Classic overt NPD. What makes Trump unique is how he is able to do this without even shifting mental gears. Its really hard for people to understand this because most “normal” people are obviously not like this.
I don’t understand what the defense will be at trial. Presumably he won’t testify, and without his testimony, can the defense introduce the idea that he declassified everything by magic thought? Does it matter, as my understanding is that the espionage act doesn’t explicitly require the documents to be classifiied? Is “But Hillary” an argument that is allowed in court?
Some interesting background
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It’ll be run out the clock so that the case is still ongoing on 20 January 2025, in the hopes that the GOP takes the White House and a pardon can be issued.
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Yep, it will be a combination.
“I can declassify them in my head” may not stand up to scrutiny. But, it will generate 6 months of hearings and decisions and repeals.
He only needs a couple things that he can spin out for 6 months each.
You think his strategy is to drag this out till the election?
I do agree but only because the only way he can get out of the charges is via Presidential immunity. Thats his end game at this point.
I am not a criminal defense expert, but I think his primary strategy will be to delay and to get at least one cult member on the jury. If he wins the election, I suppose he has a shot at getting quick appointments of DOJ staff, and somehow getting friendly folks in the positions of prosecutors who may drop the case (despite initiating a political/Constitutional crisis).
As to defending from the specific charges, he has to show that he was still authorized to possess the 31 listed documents (don’t know how he’ll do that), and that what the Justice Department perceived as obstruction / concealment / misrepresentation was just a misunderstanding/misinterpretation of the communications that took place.
I don’t see a way that he can successfully claim that the was still authorized to possess the documents. If he had a valid/plausible claim of such, it would already have come out.
His best shot at avoiding jail from this case, I think, lies in his being lucky and having drawn a friendly judge, and the (I think) better-than-even odds that he’ll get a cult member on the jury.
From my understanding the Justice Department sidestepped this argument by focusing on the military defense information where classification doesn’t matter, Trump’s behavior with the documents, and his responses to requests for their return.
It doesn’t even have to be a cult member. There are even more, I’d think, that just think you shouldn’t try the president, in general.
I saw one claim that Trump could say he removed the classification. Then the subpoena was for “classified documents”. Presto, there aren’t any.
Would the Justice Dept be willing to specify that they will not contest Trump’s claim that they weren’t classified, so they can avoid motions and appeals about that issue?
Note that they included the tape of Trump saying these are classified in the indictment.
I’m drawing a distinction between “Republicans / conservatives that support Trump, are somewhat skeptical of the prosecution, but are still able and willing to hear evidence and draw their own conclusions” and folks that I have been describing as “cult members” – the folks who have drunk the Kool Aid and would believe in Trump despite smoking gun evidence of his misdeeds.
(I probably should have used a less provocative term for the second group…but I think the label works, given my thesis.)
There almost certainly will be members of the first group on the jury. I’m reasonably comfortable that if given evidence and the letter of the law, they would be objective in casting their votes for a verdict. Admittedly I have a certain level of cynicism when it comes to jury verdicts, so there could be any number of variables in play that would impact the outcome…but for the sake of argument, I’m willing to believe that if the feds present a strong case (as they seem to have), and if Trump’s lawyers don’t have a strong defense (
) , these folks would vote to convict.
The second group is what worries me. Objectively, I don’t know how many such people exist countrywide or in the area the jury will be drawn from. Up-thread, I used 6% for the sake of argument…but that was just a number pulled out of thin air to illustrate my thoughts. (If voir-dire isn’t effective, 6% cult makeup of the jury pool implies a 54% chance of a cult member being among the 12 jurors.) If one such person gets on the jury, a unanimous vote to convict will be impossible.
I assume that it’s included just to complete the narrative, to make the case to the public that Trump was a naughty boy, and as an implicit explanation for why his retention of national defense documents rose to the level of egregiousness that justifies prosecution (as opposed to several other examples of sloppiness that have been mentioned in the media).
No, it’s more than that. For one thing, it indicates that his acts were deliberate - not just oversight and not just his lackeys doing something he can disavow.
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BTW, for those like me who really didn’t want to wade through documentation, Legal Eagle posted a pretty good video covering this today.
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What on earth is the point in having a president instead of a king if you can’t try the president for illegal activity!?
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And for those who don’t watch Legal Eagle, he points out something about the ‘but what about’-ism. Trump was not charged at all for anything related to documents that were returned in a (I’ll call it) timely manner once they were requested. Just as Pence and Biden weren’t charged for documents that they returned in a timely manner once they were discovered.
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