DOJ: Good luck coming up with a reason NOT to prosecute Trump.
— Jennifer 'I stand with Ukraine' Rubin 🇺🇦🇺🇦 (@JRubinBlogger) June 10, 2022
Struck by how clearly and unambiguously Liz Cheney argues that actions on multiple fronts by Trump (and others) in his 7-stage conspiracy to overturn election were not just wrong, but illegal - the committee is both paving a path for, and pointing a finger at, Merrick Garland.
— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) June 10, 2022
I don’t mean to rain on everybody’s parade (well, yeah, I do, actually; at least a little bit), but the fact is there wasn’t a lot of evidence shown last night. Not in the courtroom sense, anyway.JUST NOW: "We could do this. In fact, I think it's going to be hard for them NOT to do it after seeing all of this evidence."
— John Berman (@JohnBerman) June 10, 2022
--@gtconway3d on what he hopes DOJ and AG Garland are saying after last night's hearings...about a criminal case against Trump.pic.twitter.com/PcPsrJbABw
There was a stunning opening statement by Liz Cheney, with a promise of a lot of evidence to come; but the only evidence presented was witness testimony, and they were pretty much allowed to ramble and opine and otherwise say things that would take hours to present in court.
Last night was a TeeVee trial, in other words. It was very effective, but it was a congressional hearing, not a courtroom hearing. And there’s a long way to go between Liz Cheney saying the evidence will show Donald Trump is responsible for what happened, and actually presenting that evidence to a jury.
I think it will happen. I just don’t think it will happen Monday morning because of Thursday night. Nor should it. Lawyers in court have a much steeper climb than representatives on camera.
One other thing: ignore the blather about “criminal intent.” Almost everybody talking about it doesn’t understand it. The Committee made it clear last night Trump challenged the election results in 60+ court cases. And that was fine. There he was within his rights.
But when he turned to extrajudicial means, it turned criminal. Criminal intent is not “I knew was wrong and I did it anyway.” Intent is: he did it. That’s over simplifying, but it’s still more accurate than the former definition. The Committee showed last night that intent is no longer the issue.
Even if the DOJ has what would be sufficient evidence, I would lean away from an attempted prosecution. In the real world, not a fantasy world, the jury pool will be made up of a cross section of citizens. Normally a lot of people work to avoid jury duty (I am honestly surprised at the number of people I know that are very politically engaged, always vote, and will do absolutely anything to avoid sitting on a jury). Conversely, it would be relatively simple for hard core MAGA lovers to avoid getting filtered from the jury pool and ending up on the jury. In other words, the chance of a neutral jury that would dispassionately here the evidence is near zero in our current political environment. Nothing less than a full conviction will cast by the right as complete vindication and that only takes one biased juror. Finally even if a conviction could be secured, the next Republican president is very likely to be someone like DeSantis or Noem, etc. That president would most certainly pardon Trump, claiming the prosecution was politically motivated. Under any circumstance the trial would an enormous drain on the public attention away from anything else, and the next elections could well turn on a trial, not on actual policy (to extent elections ever turn on policy). I just don't see any practical upside to an attempted prosecution, and I suspect Garland is plenty smart to see the same pitfalls.
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