Washington, DC Over the last three years, defence attorneys pleading for the mercy of the Jan. 6 rioters have frequently used a similar strategy when attempting to persuade federal judges and jurors in Washington that their clients were duped by extensively refuted claims regarding the 2020 presidential election.
They contended that their customers were mentally ill or that they suffered from illnesses that rendered them susceptible to misinformation.
Lawyers for the Jan. 6 rioters have claimed in court documents and sentencing notes that their clients were misled and controlled, that their IQs were low, that they lacked critical thinking abilities, and that they were inadequately educated. Attorneys contended that they believed they were “following presidential orders” and sought the “respect” and “approval” of former President Donald Trump. Some of the Jan. 6 defendants have gone so far as to label themselves as fools, complaining that they were so easily duped into believing what they now realise to be flagrant falsehoods.
Judges seem to have responded favourably to the technique in certain cases, consenting to more compassionate punishments, especially when the offenders show real guilt for their actions and regret that they were so naive.
As his trial on January 6 approaches, it’s difficult to see how Trump, who once referred to himself as a “very stable genius,” would benefit from the same strategy.
Trump’s attorneys have taken the opposite tack in court documents about special counsel Jack Smith’s election meddling case, which may go to trial as soon as March. They are seeking to provide an academic counterargument to his falsehoods on widespread voting fraud in the 2020 election. They have stated that although Trump’s concerns about election fraud “were plausible and maintained in good faith,” they were not intentionally false. The President “disagreeing with officials now favoured by the prosecution and depending instead on them was not unreasonable at the time, and certainly not criminal.” the independent judgement that the American people elected him to use,” according to the attorneys for Trump, who expressed “reasonable concerns about the integrity of the 2020 election.”
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Further, as stated by Trump’s legal team in a filing submitted this week to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, there are “vigorous disputes and questions about the actual outcome of the 2020 Presidential election — disputes that date back are based on substantial facts regarding pervasive fraud and anomalies in the 2020 election, and they have persisted until November 2020 in our country’s political debate.”
Judges in Capitol riot cases have expressed frustration and astonishment that so many Americans, many of whom led law-abiding lives before the attack, were, in the words of Senior U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, “gullible enough to accept a lie and act on that lie.” Courts have largely rejected Trump’s claims about mass election fraud in the run-up to January 6, 2021. Similarly, juries have not been very sympathetic to either Trump surrogates who disseminated false information or to criminals who fell for it.
Trump, who has bragged about receiving an Ivy League degree from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and calling himself “a very smart guy” with “a very good brain,” would undoubtedly object to his attorneys claiming that he lacks the mental ability to discern between false information found on the internet and the real thing.
There are many reasons to think that Trump did think the election was rigged. He was not above disputing Mitt Romney’s 2012 election defeat (calling it “a total sham,” urging his fellow Romney supporters to “fight like hell” and “march on Washington and stop this travesty,” among other things). He also made up the story that “illegal votes” kept him from defeating Hillary Clinton in the 2016 popular vote, which he lost by nearly 2.9 million votes.
In addition, Trump has a track record of seeming to believe and spreading false information on the internet, especially when it comes to racial matters. He first gained notoriety in politics by pushing the myth that former President Barack Obama was born in Kenya, a claim he later withdrew after facing criticism in 2016.
However, there’s a practical reason why Trump’s attorneys won’t have any issue claiming that he was duped by false information: the Supreme Court decided years ago that deliberate blindness is not a defence.
One of the main allegations in Smith’s federal charge against Trump is that he knew, or should have known, that the lies he disseminated were untrue. According to the indictment, Trump “repeatedly and widely disseminated them anyway,” knowing full well that the assertions were untrue. This was done, it is claimed, to give the impression that his statements were true, to incite great national discontent and suspicion, and to undermine public confidence in the election’s administration. In a document sent last month, Smith’s team stated that Trump’s mental condition “will be a key issue at trial.”
By persuading jurors that Trump was consciously blind to the fact that he had lost the 2020 election, Smith’s team may even be able to secure convictions. Prosecutors may also call upon Trump’s own former campaign staff, appointees, and aides to demonstrate that he was repeatedly shown overwhelming and reliable proof of his defeat.
Trump’s solicitors are thus in a bind.
“Essentially, a lot of the Jan. 6 participants have stated that they were helpful idiots,” former top federal prosecutor Joyce Vance, an NBC News legal expert, said.. “Trump is just not able to do that.”
If he goes to trial, Vance said, “he’ll be forced to rely on this defence that he honestly believed he had won the election.” “It is difficult to think that a jury would believe the government’s evidence, which is so strong in opposition. However, he only needs to persuade one juror, so that will probably be the plan.”
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According to Jon Lewis, a research researcher at George Washington University’s Programme on Extremism, Trump would also be far less believable if he made the kinds of accusations that he has observed in his investigation of the more than 1,200 incidents involving rioters on January 6.
“It’s safe to assume that many of them were helpful fools. Lewis stated, “Whether it’s the individuals who made very persuasive claims that they were unaware of the existence of an election certification, that they were unsure of the type of building it was, or that they had a precise understanding of the nuances of the congressional legislative process.
Lewis once said, “The rhetoric, the s—, flows down the hill.” “The person at the top cannot also say that he was unaware of what was happening there.”
Trump’s attorneys are still making every effort to disprove the baseless, disproven conspiracy theories about domestic election theft that he was repeatedly voicing in public. Instead, they suggest in court documents that Trump was worried about foreign intervention in the 2020 election, even though he didn’t make that argument at the time.
In addition, Trump’s attorneys stated that he intends to contend that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s declaration on November 12, 2020, that the 2020 election was the “most secure in American history” was, in fact, “part of a partisan effort to provide false assurances to the public that outpaced the government’s understanding of the situation.” Following that declaration, Christopher Krebs—whom Trump had selected to lead the agency in 2017—was fired.
Many of the Jan. 6 defendants still hold the belief that Trump won the 2020 presidential election, as he continues to assert. However, some of the people who were convicted for acting on such lies now claim to have changed their minds.
Gabriel Chase, a college student associated with the far-right America First movement, wrote, “I am someone who made the stupidest decision of my life because I was gullible enough to believe the lies of people who were using me for their aggrandisement,” before a judge imposing a probationary sentence in his misdemeanour case.
A federal public defender informed a judge that his client wanted to learn how to “critically think” to prevent being duped by “people that are portrayed as highly intelligent, high-ranking officials.” The client had filmed himself using marijuana inside the Capitol. Peter Schwartz, a Pennsylvanian, was “motivated by a misunderstanding as to the facts surrounding the 2020 election,” according to a different team of defence attorneys who were also free to continue spreading the “great lie” that Trump won the election, with Donald Trump being one of the most well-known.
Other attorneys have presented the courts with a variety of excuses and circumstances that rendered the Jan. 6 defendants vulnerable to online misinformation disseminated by Trump and his Republican allies. These excuses include claiming that their clients had autism spectrum disorders, bipolar disorder, anxiety, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or learning disabilities. They have discussed drug and alcohol addictions as well as challenging upbringings that prevented their clients from having positive male role models when they were growing up.
In a few instances, Trump was depending on the same individuals who disseminated false information about the election and incited his followers to storm the Capitol.
In an interview with the FBI, Doug Jensen, a Capitol rioter who supported QAnon and thought he was attacking the White House, claimed, “Sidney Powell got me fired up.” Powell, a lawyer on the far-right, attempted to void Trump’s victory. She seems to be one of the unindicted co-conspirators named in Trump’s federal indictment for election tampering, having entered a guilty plea in the Georgia case.
In a letter to the court, Ray Epps, who has also been the victim of false information on the internet, said that he “was gullible and fell for the lie that the election was stolen.” He will be punished next week after entering a guilty plea to one count of unruly or disruptive conduct on restricted grounds.
At her trial, Oath Keeper Jessica Watkins, who was found guilty of many felonies including obstruction of an official procedure, said that “in hindsight, I feel like I was gullible.”
Watkins stated before her sentence in May that before the Capitol attack, she had been following “a steady diet” of Infowars and Alex Jones and had heard false information such as “Dominion servers were being invaded by the Chinese.” Watkins acknowledged that she needed to be held responsible for her actions, but she still had concerns about the 2020 presidential election.
Before receiving an 8-and-a-half-year term in federal prison, Watkins told the judge, “I was just another idiot running around the Capitol.” “But we hold idiots accountable.”
