Grasping At Straws

I’ve been holding onto this, trying to put one last piece in the puzzle. I finally found it, on the floor, under the table. But we’ll start with the puzzle:

More importantly: LOOK WHAT HE SAID. He said there would be a conflict and suggests it's bc she represented Mike Flynn. 

Even in real time, the timing of his pardon and Trump's claims were an obvious problem. The single solitary overt act in the indictment makes it far worse.

Wait for it...

On Thursday (in the response to Trump's absolute immunity filing), DOJ said, a pardon for a quid pro quo is illegal. 

Now he's insisting she wasn't his lawyer on the day of that pardon (11/25), the key date in indictment.

There it is.

Powell’s status isn’t important to the Georgia case. As ew points out:

denying she was his attorney doesn't neutralize the allegation that he pushed her claims even after he claimed she was crazy. Nothing about that relies on privilege.

Trump is not talking about the Georgia case, he’s thinking about the D.C. case and his bid for absolute immunity (I’m only imagining he listened to something his lawyers said). But the problem is, she was his lawyer, and we know that from his tweets, and from the testimony of Sidney Powell. What’s the connection? Trump says Powell would be “conflicted” if she’d been Trump’s lawyer and also Michael Flynn’s lawyer when Trump pardoned Flynn after Flynn TWICE plead guilty to the charges.

Now the DOJ example of a corrupt criminal act by a sitting POTUS makes sense. That’s one example among many DOJ raised in its response to Trump’s absolute immunity argument.

It really doesn’t matter if Powell was Trump’s attorney for the Georgia charges. What matters is what she knows and testifies to. But Trump thinks it matters that she wasn’t his lawyer for the D.C. case.

Here’s the relevant part of the DOJ’s argument:

To illustrate, although the president’s power to grant pardons is exclusive and not subject to congressional regulation, see United States v. Klein, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) 128, 147-48 (1872), criminal immunity should not shield the corrupt use of a presidential pardon—which plainly constitutes “anything of value” for purposes of the federal bribery statute, see 18 U.S.C. § 201(b)(3)—to induce another person to testify falsely or not to testify at all in a judicial, congressional, or agency proceeding.

Trump seems to think that describes him. And that makes him afraid his pardon of Flynn was worked out with Powell to buy Flynn’s silence. Or rather, he’s afraid that’s what will be found out.

Sidney Powell who is a co-conspirator in that D.C. case, and may soon be looking for a plea deal with the DOJ just so her testimony in Georgia won’t be used against her in D.C.

What’s the missing piece? Well, was Trump suddenly listening to his lawyers (instead of telling them to yell at the judge and insult the judge’s clerk as well as opposing counsel)? Was he inadvertently giving away trial strategy? Or was he, more likely, repeating stuff he heard the adults say so he’d sound “smart.” 

I don’t think Trump suddenly became clever; or strategic; or even knew, kinda sorta, what he was talking about.  I think he was just grasping at the last thing he heard the adults saying, and, like a little kid, getting it completely wrong.

Why? Because there have been hearings in Florida over the conflict of interest in the lawyer for Nauta also having represented a witness in the case (for the record, I think the conflict is clear and damning; but I also think the judge is so over her head she has to look up to see bottom. Why she doesn’t just resign from the bench is proof of the old adage that you can’t fix stupid.). That’s where Trump has been hearing about “conflicted” (his term). And he knows the DOJ didn’t win their argument (see”Judge, incompetent, supra), and now he thinks that’s a silver bullet.

He does seem to think that if Powell wasn’t his attorney when Trump pardoned Flynn, then…something is okay. I’m not sure he knows what that “something” is, but he thinks it exonerates him. And he’s throwing around a new term he’s heard, thinking it will stick; or work; or save him. Or just be enough ink he can get away.

It just doesn’t mean anything. Sure, Trump said it. But Trump says a lot of stupid stuff.