"The depths of his dishonesty is just astounding to me. The dishonesty, the transactional nature of every relationship, though it’s more pathetic than anything else. He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life.”
Marine General John Kelly, former Trump Chief of Staff
Trump is crazy.
That is his defense in the criminal indictments.
The newest indictment contains a premise that Donald Trump knew he was asserting false claims of a fraudulent election. It argues that he and co-conspirators organized a plot to convince local election officials, state legislatures, governors, Congress, and the Vice President to award the electoral votes to him from states Trump knew he lost.
We have a heads up about Trump's defense as a criminal defendant. His lead lawyer, John Lauro, was on Fox News on Tuesday:
I would like them to try to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Donald Trump believed that these allegations were false.
GOP Representatives and Senators are already joining in to assert this defense. They say this is a free speech and free thought issue. Trump had every right to have his doubts about the election and every right to pursue legal avenues to correct the presumed election error. It is not criminal to be wrong, they say. It is not criminal to lie or to assert an implausible and contradicted claim. It isn't criminal to believe fantastical rumors. He chose to believe people who gave questionable information about election fraud and he chose to believe lawyers who asserted novel theories of Constitutional remedies.
Vice President Pence said Trump chose to believe "crackpots."
I'm not convinced that the president acting on bad advice of a group of crank lawyers that came into the White House in the days before January 6 is actually criminal.
After the indictment he told reporters:
Anyone who asks someone else to put themselves over the Constitution should never be president of the United States again. . . . The president was surrounded by a group of crackpot lawyers. . . .It will be up to the government now to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this actually represented criminal activity.
That is the defense. It isn't a crime to be a fool.
Trump is a profoundly flawed person, both a con man and delusional. He is dangerous and crazy. Imagine yourself on a jury. Can you imagine having a smidgin of doubt that, for narcissist Trump, the idea that he could actually lose by seven million votes to Joe Biden was so very repellent and humiliating that he could not internalize that reality? It simply must have been a stolen election and therefore he wasn't in a criminal conspiracy to defraud anyone with lies. Maybe Trump really thinks he is a patriot attempting to rescue America. The crazier Trump is, the more plausible that defense.
Trump can sell. He appears to believe what he says, at least while he is saying it. About 40% of Americans believe Trump. They represent near-majorities in states with over 300 electoral votes. Notwithstanding the enthusiasm of MSNBC hosts and panelists, this is not an ironclad case. It only takes one out of 12 people on a jury to have reasonable doubt. One can have that doubt two ways. Either Trump is a good, honest patriot being persecuted by Democrats, or Trump is, as his former Chief of Staff put it, a deeply flawed person.
I predict a Biden/Trump rematch would settle into a choice between elderly-but-stable versus crazy-change-agent. Crazy is a disadvantage in a political contest, but it is a defense in a criminal trial.
The indictment attempts partially to sidestep the intent issue by looking at criminal actions, not just belief. Even if Trump was deluded, he still did not have the right to orchestrate fake electors who filed false certifications of election any more than did the deluded-but-sincere person who went to the D.C. pizza parlor and shot it up looking for a non-existent basement with Hillary Clinton's pedophile captives. It may be criminal without exactly being intentional fraud. Prosecutors may succeed in making that distinction between deluded thought and criminal behavior. Trump's lawyers are already trying to conflate the two. This may be a close call, and it only takes one person with reasonable doubt.
Mr Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, said: If you tell a lie large and often enough, people will believe it!