For years, right wingers have told people who got arrested for minor offenses that claimed they didn’t know it was illegal that, “ignorance of the law is no excuse.”
Now suddenly it’s an excuse.
All four charges laid out in the second federal indictment of former President Donald Trump center around the idea that Trump tried to steal the 2020 election. Hence, some people incorrectly believe that part of the prosecution’s job will be showing that Trump understood that he was the one trying to steal the election, and not that it was stolen from him. Those people are mistaken. Special counsel Jack Smith can convict Trump on all charges — corruptly obstructing and conspiring to corrupt an official proceeding, conspiring to defraud the government, and conspiring to violate civil rights — without ever showing that Trump knew he had lost the 2020 election.
I’m liking Jack Smith more-and-more everyday.
Trumpy-Boi has the burden of proof
You can show him something and have him deny it moments later and there’s no way of divining if he’s lying, a moron, that fucking narcissistic or all of the above.
The answer is D, all of the above.
Sadly, that isn’t how it works. The prosecution always has the burden of proof. The accused is presumed innocent.
Let’s not go crazy and act like things are different just because cheeto man is a douche canoe and we want to see him rot in jail.
On the other hand, we can’t just allow “I didn’t know” or “I can’t remember” to be a universal get-out-of-jail-free card, or anybody could get out of anything with this One Weird Trick. Can you imagine someone getting out of a murder charge by claiming they didn’t know the thing in their hand was a gun? (Oh wait, that actually happened, more or less. Not sure how that affects my argument, though.)
