Jen Psaki Picks Apart Trump’s ‘Absurd’ Legal Defenses: ‘Don’t Exactly Need to Be Atticus Finch’ to See the ‘Cracks’ (Video)
Facing down his third indictment, former president Donald Trump’s legal team appears to have prepared three pillars of their defense for him. But on Sunday, MSNBC host Jen Psaki tore down each and every “absurd” one.
Before fully getting into things, Psaki prefaced that she isn’t a lawyer, nor has she ever been one. But, she argued, it doesn’t even take a lawyer to spot flaws in the options that Trump’s team has drawn up.
“You don’t exactly need to be Atticus Finch to recognize that the arguments by Trump’s legal team don’t exactly hold up,” she mocked. “I mean, there appear to be three they’re pretty focused on repeating over and over, and each of them feels worthy of some scrutiny.”
The MSNBC host then did just that, looking at the possibilities one by one. First, she looked at the free speech argument, in which Trump’s team is arguing that he was within his legal rights to question the integrity of the 2020 election.
Psaki conceded that that is true, and pointed out that even special counsel Jack Smith and his team stipulated that.
“But here’s the problem. According to the indictment, Trump and others worked together with the goal of pressuring officials to overturn a free and fair election,” she said. “That’s not actually free speech. That’s a conspiracy.”
Psaki then turned to the second defense, which she summed up as “blame the lawyers.” Trump’s current lawyers are saying that, in all his actions following his loss of the 2020 election, he was only following the advice of counsel, so he can’t be held liable.
“Donald Trump wasn’t led astray by his lawyers, he ignored them and instead went lawyer shopping,” Psaki rebutted. “He went out of his way to find and empower people willing to make the argument that he wanted to make.”
Then finally came the third “and perhaps the most absurd argument”: ignorance. Trump’s team has also said that truly just believed that he won, despite plenty of evidence otherwise.
“There are more than a couple of cracks in the foundation of that one,” Psaki mocked. “Just this week, one of Donald Trump’s lawyers very plainly said that everyone around him knew he lost.”
Psaki then pulled up several clips indicating exactly that, before recapping her succinct debunking of Trump’s entire plan.
“Trump really can’t claim free speech here, can’t really blame bad lawyers — all of whom are co-conspirators anyway — and he can’t really claim ignorance because that’s not exactly believable,” she said. “So it’s such a weak legal defense.”
She continued, “Watch what Trump and his allies will do now. It’s a predictable and unfortunately familiar playbook: delay, confuse, make a lot of noise.”
You can watch Psaki’s full comments in the video above.
The post Jen Psaki Picks Apart Trump’s ‘Absurd’ Legal Defenses: ‘Don’t Exactly Need to Be Atticus Finch’ to See the ‘Cracks’ (Video) appeared first on TheWrap.