Trump Has The Perfect Defense

Trump Has the Perfect Defense to Avoid Becoming a Convicted Felon

 

With over 40 felony charges already filed against him, it’s an obvious understatement to suggest that Trump appears to be in serious legal jeopardy. Due to a copious collection of written, video and documented statements by witnesses, the four felony charges filed by DOJ’s Special Counsel Jack Smith relating to Trump’s efforts to overthrow the 2020 election appear to present the most risk for Trump.  

But is Trump actually in jeopardy of being convicted and sentenced to jail time? Not likely, because in reality he has a very straightforward, simple and effective defense that he can employ.

Trump could use what is called the mens rea (“guilty mind”) defense. The theory of mens rea is that a defendant cannot be convicted of a federal crime unless it can be proven that they had a knowing of and clear intent to commit a crime; in other words, they had a “guilty mind.”

The American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code reduces the “mens rea” terms to four: criminals must act “purposely,” meaning that they must have an actual, consciously formed intent to achieve the criminal consequence; “knowingly,” meaning a conscious awareness that their conduct will produce the consequence; “recklessly,” meaning conscious disregard of the fact that their conduct is creating an unreasonable peril; and “negligently,” meaning inadvertence to peril that would have been apparent to any reasonable person. 

If Trump wants to employ the mens rea defense, he will first have to acknowledge that he made all the claims and took the actions he did to overturn the 2020 election but argue that he had no intent to commit a crime. He would argue that he deeply and sincerely believed that there were massive amounts of fraud that caused the election to be “stolen” from him and he had the right to right the wrong.  

It may be why, in anticipation of this type of defense, the prosecution seems to be planning to bring in a parade of credible witnesses who will confirm that they told Trump there was no evidence indicating material election fraud.  

In order to counter this evidence, Trump would have to argue that all the clear evidence and everyone who told him that there was no significant election fraud were wrong; that only he knew the truth. This would mean that virtually all of Trump’s close advisors, including his own appointed Attorney General, the head of the FBI and the CIA, 62 different state and federal courts, numerous state recounts and voter audits, all of which concluded that the election results were valid, were wrong and only Trump himself knew the truth of fraud.

This means that ultimately, for Trump to be found innocent of the DOJ charges he would have to show and prove that he does not have the mental capacity of a reasonable person to be able to understand and accept what others were saying to him about the election. Something that should be very easy for Trump to do. 

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Bob MacDonald -- Former CEO of ITT Life; founder of LifeUSA; retired chairman and CEO of Allianz Life of North America; author of numerous books on business, management and leadership. Contact: bobmac5201@gmail.com



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