If Donald Trump is charged in the Capitol attack, what exactly would the charges be? BarbMcQuade discusses why Trump’s mind-set is so important to a potential criminal case.
. Nevertheless, Trump continued to encourage protests against the election’s certification, and expressed sympathy for the view that Vice-President Mike Pence deserved to be killed. The biggest question hanging over the hearings is whether they will contribute to a criminal case against the former President. The Justice Department is conducting a wide-ranging investigation into January 6th, but this is not the first time that Trump has appeared to be in the crosshairs of prosecutors.
But a prosecution would be for violating these broader laws rather than laws related to the functioning of elections specifically? But there is this concept of willful blindness, where a jury is instructed that a person cannot ignore a high probability that a fact is true just because he wishes it weren’t so. So if there are enough people, as we heard at the first public hearing, telling him, “No, you lost. No, there was no fraud. There was no there there. It was bullshit,” at some point, most rational people are going to believe, O.K., I’m just making this up. There’s no evidence.
So none of these defenses would be specifically about executive power, where courts have often given Presidents wide latitude? I was hoping you could throw a little cold water on all this, because there have been so many examples in the past five years of Trump not actually getting charged. I’m curious what you see as the potential pitfalls here.
On the other hand, to not hold him accountable, to not file charges, might be even worse because one of the reasons we punish people criminally is to deter them and others from doing it again in the future. And, if you don’t hold them accountable, will people just keep trying to do this?
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