This might seal Donald Trump’s fate
In the real world, criminal convictions don’t come down to someone throwing open the courtroom doors at the last minute and ushering in a surprise witness who unravels the entire mystery. Instead, convictions typically come down to the kinds of details that may seem small in terms of entertainment value, but make the difference in terms of convincing a jury of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
To that end, two new small details about Donald Trump’s actions on January 6th may serve to seal his fate in two of his upcoming criminal trials. The first is that Trump’s own social media guy Dan Scavino testified to Jack Smith that as the violence unfolded, Trump was “just not interested” in posting anything to try to quell it, according to ABC News. This helps demonstrate that Trump wanted the violence, because he thought it helped his prospects.
The second new detail is that once Trump was informed that Mike Pence had been taken to a secure location, his response was “So what?” This helps demonstrate that after Trump saw that his insurrection had put Pence’s life in danger, he had no interest in whether Pence came out of it safely or not.
This kind of depraved indifference helps take away Trump’s ability to make the reasonable doubt argument that he didn’t intend to incite the insurrection, or that he disagreed with the actions of his own supporters. He had the opportunity to demonstrate that sentiment on January 6th, and instead he showed his own underlings the precise opposite sentiment: he loved what was going on.
So when Donald Trump goes on trial in Washington DC and Fulton County for trying to overthrow the 2020 election, the above testimony should help make it a very easy decision for both juries to convict him. These new details may be what ultimately seals Trump’s fate and sends him to prison for life.
Also keep in mind that while this is new information to us, the reporting says that Jack Smith has already had this testimony in hand for some time. This isn’t something that Smith now has to go back and work into his case. It’s part of what Smith’s case has been built on all along. Once again, it turns out the prosecutors are way ahead of where the public thought the prosecutors were. We’re going to keep seeing that pattern going forward.
