Bad, Immoral, and Lying Does Not Mean Criminal

Donald Trump is innocent until proven guilty.

I still remain baffled by CNN's Brianna Keilar’s Kasie Hunt’s (my apologies, it was Kasie Hunt and thanks to those who texted to correct me) interaction with Scott Jennings on Sunday’s “State of the Union.” She was defensive on behalf of Hunter Biden, telling Scott Jennings we needed to be sympathetic to people with addiction issues and then declaring that Biden does now recognize his seventh grandchild.

See for yourself here.

Hunt has never been that deferential to Donald Trump or his family, and, in fact, the bulk of commentary across that network and others has just sounded like their minds are made up and Trump should skip the trial and report to prison.

The man is innocent until proven guilty.

I expect Trump will be found guilty in the classified documents case. I know a lot of conservatives have been spun into believing that, as President, Trump could just simply declassify the documents by sending them to Mar-a-Lago. But that really is not so, no matter how loudly conservatives scream. That case is serious.

The case regarding January 6th, if the statements in the indictment are true, should absolutely be disqualifying on Trump seeking the presidency again. In fact, he will be financially bled dry by lawyers defending him. His massive campaign war chest has been wiped out with legal fees.

The indictment claims that Trump knew the election was not conducted with a level of fraud capable of altering that outcome. We should pause to note the language: “outcome-determinative fraud.” As I’ve said before, there is always fraud and misfeasance in elections, but rarely is it “outcome-determinative.” By using this language, the prosecutor concedes elections are error prone and some engage in shenanigans (Republicans and Democrats both), but none of the errors or hanky-panky were enough to affect the outcome.

I know some believe otherwise, but they’ve failed repeatedly trying to prove it.

Regardless, having read the complaint, I think a couple of things.

First, if even half the facts are true, Donald Trump should never be elected to anything ever again. He is a liar, a cheat, a man of terrible character and immorality, and has swindled millions out of their money in the name of advancing a campaign while using that money for his personal benefit, e.g. paying lawyers. Mike Pence is right.

Second, I do not see how bad character, lying, and immorality is criminal.

Conservatives think teachers who help kids transition without their parents’ knowledge must be rounded up and jailed. But it isn’t a crime or was not anywhere until the recent outrage.

Progressives think Donald Trump should be in jail for January 6th and trying to undermine the election. But the basis of the crimes is his public statements, based on the advice of lawyers and other advisors. That’s not criminal as much as the left wants it to be.

The core of the indictment centers around President Trump’s knowledge that what he was saying was false. Specifically, the eleventh paragraph states:

The Defendant, his co-conspirators, and their agents made knowingly false claims that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the 2020 presidential election. These prolific lies about election fraud included dozens of specific claims that there had been substantial fraud in certain states, such as that large numbers of dead, non-resident, non-citizen, or otherwise ineligible voters had cast ballots, or that voting machines had changed votes for the Defendant to votes for Biden. These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false. In fact, the Defendant was notified repeatedly that his claims were untrue—often by the people on whom he relied for candid advice on important matters, and who were best positioned to know the facts— and he deliberately disregarded the truth.

I’m sorry, but just because advisors told Trump his claims were untrue does not mean he knew them to be untrue. Others told him they were true. That gets to the central weakness — Trump gets to discern who he believes is true, and he believed outsiders like Giuliani and Powell, not people he perceived as disloyal to him. That may be wrong, but that is not criminal. It should, however, be disqualifying to future office that the rejected the advice of the competent people and believed crazy town leaky hair nuts.

There is this from paragraph 20 about the Georgia situation:

On November 25, Co-Conspirator 3 filed a lawsuit against the Governor of Georgia falsely alleging “massive election fraud” accomplished through the voting machine company’s election software and hardware. Before the lawsuit was even filed, the Defendant retweeted a post promoting it. The Defendant did this despite the fact that when he had discussed Co- Conspirator 3’s far-fetched public claims regarding the voting machine company in private with advisors, the Defendant had conceded that they were unsupported and that Co-Conspirator 3 sounded “crazy.” Co-Conspirator 3’s Georgia lawsuit was dismissed on December 7.

None of this proves he knew it was false — just far-fetched and sounded crazy, but we just went through a period where a lab-originated virus plagued the world and the press and experts had told us it was crazy to think it was lab-originated.

Again and again, the prosecution just presumed Trump knew it was false. They repeatedly refer to “the knowingly false claims,” but their assertions about Trump’s state of mind and actual belief are really, really weak.

Most of the culture tells me that Jesus is an imaginary sky god, but by faith, I believe He is true, and that faith is based on evidence. Trump’s evidence for a stolen election is weaker than the evidence for Christ’s resurrection, but if he believed it, he wasn’t acting to break the law but to defend an election he thought was stolen.

We know that many people had direct access to Trump and kept telling him these crazy things, and Trump has a propensity to believe the last people he speaks to. The left may not like this, but what a reasonable person believed is not as relevant as what Trump actually believed.

Maybe I missed it, but in the forty-five pages¹, I did not see anywhere wherein Trump admitted he knew the statements were false, and previous press reports suggested the prosecutor was probing what Trump thought in private. The best they can come up with seems to suggest Trump thought some things sounded crazy, but that doesn’t mean he did not believe them. Have you read the man’s tweets?!

Yes, this stuff should disqualify him from the presidency. It is bad stuff. But I have a hard time seeing they’ve proven beyond a reasonable doubt that he engaged in a criminal conspiracy. It actually seems his state of mind was that he was trying to stop a criminal conspiracy. And he can always claim he relied on the advice of lawyers. They should have had reason to disbelieve stuff, but Trump had every right to rely on them.

The bottom line is that I think it would be best for Trump to go away. And I think he will be financially bled dry and have no money to mount an effective presidential campaign. And I think the evidence in Florida presents a compelling legal case against him that could send him to prison. And I think this case stretches the boundaries of the law too much to satisfy the fantasies of progressives.

I also think a jury in Washington, D.C. will find Trump guilty if this case can make it past fair judges (and the judge with the case is not on Trump’s side), but, like the Bob McDonald case years ago in Virginia, I think Trump wins on appeal. By the way, Jack Smith prosecuted that case too.

One last point on this — given the shallowness of the indictment, I have to presume that Jack Smith is going to have a superseding indictment like he had in Florida. That might make this more serious and more fleshed out. But until then, I am unpersuaded this sticks.

Now, relatedly, yesterday, the nation’s credit rating was downgraded. Joe Biden and Donald Trump are tied in the New York Times poll even as a majority think Trump engaged in crimes. Why is this so? Because as much as people dislike Trump, his economy was good till COVID, and we didn’t have crackheads, homeless activists, and transgender bullies shaking down America. Democrats could lose to a man under multiple indictments and possibly headed to prison because Joe Biden sucks so bad. That, my friends, is the most remarkable thing.

1. Why do I think it is not a coincidence that this indictment against the 45th President is 45 pages long?