Watch: Former federal prosecutor explains the legal argument that implicates Trump
The House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on Congress and what led up to the insurrection held the second day of public hearings linking the lie that the 2020 election was stolen to the attack.
Former federal prosecutor Joyce White Vance spoke to MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace and explained the specific piece of the hearing that links former President Donald Trump to the criminal liability in this case.
They brought up the testimony of Republican election lawyer Ben Ginsberg, who testified under oath that the 2020 election wasn't close and that it was in 2000 it was a matter of under 600 votes in a single state. In Trump's case, it was over 10,000 votes in three states. So, after the election was over, there was no chance of Trump being able to change that many votes.
"When [Ginsberg] says this it's really important. He makes the point that Trump had to win not just in one state, but in three states at a minimum," echoed Vance. "He would have had to have had recounts and that wasn't happening. So, if you're Merrick Garland, how does this strike you? What you're listening for is what did people actually communicate directly to Trump? Because if Merrick Garland isn't going to have direct evidence that Trump knew he had lost the election, the theory he has to have is one of willful blindness, that Trump stuck his head in the sand."
The term "willful blindness" is a key legal term to identify someone who knows what they're doing is illegal, but who tries to make sure they don't hear or know about things to eliminate any criminal liability.
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"So, when you have witness after witness come in and say on the night of the election Trump declared his victory despite being told by people in the campaign that he didn't have the numbers, ultimately you have to get precise testimony from those witnesses of what they said to Trump," Vance continued. "You want to get some of his reaction into it if you can. And then when you get into the hardcore examples of voter fraud that Trump kept throwing up and saying this is fraud. And people at DOJ repeatedly striking that down, Bill Barr, Rich Donoghue and you hear B.J. Pak saying we investigated because Bill Barr told us it was top priority and we went out and said that the president's case of fraud in Georgia wasn't the case of fraud at all and that's communicated back to Trump. That evidence all accumulates into a very solid block of proof of willful blindness."
Neal Katyal said "his lawyers at a criminal trial one day ran one heck of an insanity defense because no rational person could believe this in the face of all of the investigations the department did to track down all of this cockamamie theories."
See the conversation below or at this link.
Former federal prosecutor explains the legal argument that implicates Trump in liability www.youtube.com