Trump claims ‘every right’ to interfere with the 2020 election. Jack Smith can use that against him

Just days after special counsel Jack Smith obtained a superseding indictment against former President Donald Trump for attempting to overturn the 2020 election, the former president claimed in a Fox News interview that he had “every right” to do so. In the interview, which aired Sunday, Trump complained yet again about the Justice Department’s criminal charges against him. “Whoever heard you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election where you have every right to do it, you get indicted, and your poll numbers go up?” he said. Trump is forever trying his cases in the court of public opinion, where there are no rules of evidence, no rules of procedure and no rules of law. Such a “statement of a party opponent” is not subject to the hearsay rule, which limits out-of-court statements from being admitted at trial. For example, Trump said during a CNN town hall last year that he took classified documents to his Mar-a-Lago residence when he left the White House. Should Smith’s case concerning those documents finally go to trial, prosecutors can introduce that statement to the jury to prove that Trump in fact knowingly took those documents. However, the defense team does not have the same latitude to use Trump’s words at trial. In that same CNN town hall, Trump claimed that he had the “absolute right” to take those documents under the Presidential Records Act. Trump’s lawyers are prohibited from introducing those out-of-court statements to prove that Trump had that right (which, of course, is a lie, as the Presidential Records Act gives him no such right). In some ways, the rules governing the admissibility of statements of a party opponent feel a bit lopsided in favor of the prosecution. But if prosecutors made public statements about evidence in a case, then presented proof at trial that was contradicted by those earlier statements, the defense team could seek to introduce the prosecution’s earlier words as a statement of a party opponent. Nor could they call witnesses to testify that Trump said X, Y or Z, because that kind of testimony is prohibited under the rules of hearsay. A defendant facing multiple criminal indictments would be well advised to keep his mouth shut. In other recent cases, including his Manhattan criminal trial, he has often (though not always) decided not to testify — likely because he and his lawyers know he would be destroyed on cross examination. A defendant facing multiple criminal indictments would be well advised to keep his mouth shut. This is why I have said all along that as each of Trump’s criminal cases move from the court of public opinion into courts of law, he will be convicted in a New York minute — just as he was in, well, New York. – This Summarize was created by Neural News AI (V1). Source: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-election-interference-2020-fox-news-jack-smith-rcna169307