The Justice Department Monday criticized former President Trump for “attempts to sanitize his conduct” leading up to the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, urging a judge to reject several motions to dismiss the case and disentangle Trump from the storming of the building.
The four filings, together more than 100 pages, respond to a series of pretrial motions filed by the Trump team last month asking the judge to toss the former president’s 2020 election case on a number of grounds, ranging from arguments the charges step on his First Amendment rights and that his speech simply amounted to raising concerns about the election to claims he is facing a “vindictive prosecution.”
Prosecutors forcefully defended their indictment while accusing Trump of “perpetrating an unprecedented campaign of deceit.”
Yeah, but that doesn’t mean his lawyers are competent enough to make a reasonable argument that doesn’t invent grievances where there are none.
And even if they wanted to file some motion that might work, Trump might stop them because he wants them to file “election interference/First Amendment Violation/Witch Hunt” motions instead. And Donald is the one signing the theoretical checks (which should be arriving in 2 weeks if the lawyers weren’t smart enough to get paid up front).
Trump’s legal strategy is to delay any consequences until January 2025, be sworn in as President, and then not only pardon himself, but arrest anyone who dared to charge him with crimes.
The part that gives me the most hope in all this is he can’t pardon himself out of the NY fraud case or the Georgia interference case. The former is a state civil case and the latter is a state criminal case.
And vis a vis his dream of arresting his opponents, I imagine that even if he guts the entire White House and installs only cronies, he’ll still face opposition across the other branches of government and the various state governments that would inevitably need to be involved.
His lawyers know they don’t have a case, so they’re using a tried and true strategy of annoying the judge into making a mistake that they can appeal on.