regulate the judge, jury pool or witnesses, and how willing is jack smith willing to take. and he wrote before, if you come after me, i am coming after you, and we all know what it me means and so i would consider that, because of the facts, but he has spoken about the judge that he wants removed from the case. elie, what is the significance of this happening? very unlikely, and zero percent that the judge is going to be removed. first thing to clarify. donald trump is suggesting in the post that she was selected by doj and that is not true. there is a literal spin that you pull a note card out of, and she
there. what he is saying is that he used that action, that mob attack, as part of his pressure campaign to change the outcome. devlin, you write today about the importance of what s in trump s head, how much of it he believes of his own false claims. bill barr said, he has come around to believing trump actually knew he lost. put that in the context of this case. right. i think one of the important elements in this indictment is that they say right on page 1, the defendant knew these things were lies. trump knew that he was lying. i think one of the interesting dynamics that creates for the future trial is that you are probably going to have some witnesses who say they believe he knew. i also suspect, based on our reporting, you will have a number of witnesses who say he believed that there was this fraud, this mass voter fraud, that we know did not happen. i just think one of the really interesting issues here that a jury will ultimately have to
donald trump is relying on some of his co-conspirators, some of them lawyers, over the advice of white house counsel. not only the white house counsel, deputy counsel, but people in the justice department as well. he is talking about jeff clark, an alleged co-conspirator, who was an assistant u.s. attorney for the environment, with no experience in this aspect of criminal law. he is talking about john eastman and his outside advice. can that be advice of counsel, which is a legitimate defense? i mean, i don t know that any of them suspected when they signed up to be of counsel that they would be named as unindicted co-conspirators. you would never sign up for that. to your point, presidents have outside counsel for a variety of reasons in their personal lives. what was happening here was forum shopping for legal advice that would meet what president trump wanted it to be. people, to your point, who knew
because he wants to fire the justice department, expand his own power, which he has conveyed to aides, or because he wants to pardon himself, if it comes to that point. he is running, in part, for his own legal survival. of course, it s going to be a part of it. there s a difference. the primary and the primary voters and their views it has hardened for him. there s a gap between donald trump and the next people in the primary. that s in every poll you see. that s a different animal than a general election. we don t know what this is going to look like in a general election. it s not there yet. typically, voters independent voters, people who are swing voters, they will make decisions that are different from what a republican base voter may decide or biden administration their decision on. this is undoubtedly helped him with his base. andrew, let me bring you in here to talk about the argument that they are going to make when they get before the trial judge
wrestle with is, what is in trump s mind? what s his intent as he sets out to do these things? can they get to that without putting him on the stand? sure. there s a million ways to get to intent, through witnesses who say what someone means, including through other actions. there are moments in the indictment that describe trump saying things that are flat out untrue and acknowledging that, for example, when he refers to sidney powell as crazy, he understands these things aren t true. the question, is there enough of that to convey a convincing portrait that trump knew he was lying? you recently reported that he spent $40 million from the save america pac. he is bleeding money in terms of what he is spending on lawyers and using political committees to pay those lawyers. how aggressively does he need to fund-raise off of the latest