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AUGUST 3, 2023

On the Prospect website

Ryan Cooper on Jack Smith's efforts to compensate for Merrick
Garland's unconscionable delays
<[link removed]>
in bringing Trump to justice; Jarod Facundo on private equity driving a
trucking company to ruin
<[link removed]>;
and Maureen Tkacik on Big Pharma's profiteering off of orphan drugs
<[link removed]>.

Meyerson on TAP

The Donald's Possible Defenses

He's too deluded to know he lost! Coups that fail don't count! And
other cornucopias of crap!

"Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest," England's King Henry
II is said to have said back in the 1100s, referring to his political
opponent Archbishop Thomas Becket, whom Henry's followers promptly
bumped off. In the ensuing roughly 850 years, Henry has generally been
held responsible for the murder, even as no one has questioned his right
to speech per se.

That's an unfortunate precedent (originalists take note) for Donald
Trump, who sought to politically wipe out no mere priest but a decisive
majority of the American electorate, the Electoral College, and the
Constitution's process for designating a president. As Special Counsel
Jack Smith made clear in his indictment of Trump, Trump was being
charged not for his speech per se, but for directing his followers to
create bogus slates of electors, for suggesting (à la Henry) to
Georgia's secretary of state that he "find" (i.e., create) just enough
votes to flip that state into his column, for telling Republican state
legislative leaders to illegally override the outcome of the election in
their states by having the legislature award him the state's electoral
votes, and for repeatedly telling his vice president to fraudulently
anoint him as the election's actual victor. To argue that effectively
soliciting and commissioning these fraudulent deeds was permitted by the
Constitution's guarantee of free speech is to argue that a mob boss
who commissions a hit isn't culpable for the hit men's whackings.

Yet that's the argument that Trump's defenders, most particularly
his lead attorney John Lauro, are making.

And if that doesn't work, they have a fallback: Trump really believed
he had won, so any of the illegal acts he commissioned weren't really
illegal because, well, he believed he'd won. Generally, of course,
strongly held beliefs do not constitute grounds for exoneration from
criminal acts, as numerous convicted felons could attest. Still, in the
absence of better defenses, the Trumpians are pushing this line for all
it's worth. As Lauro said
<[link removed]>
on Fox News: "I would like them to try to prove beyond a reasonable
doubt that Donald Trump believed that these allegations [of voter fraud]
were false."

Now,

**there's** a defense that demonstrates Trump's bona fides to hold
the most powerful office on the planet. Despite hearing from his top
campaign aides, his Justice Department (starting with Attorney General
Bill Barr), and the 61 federal judges, many of them his own appointees,
who dismissed allegations of voter fraud since they had no substance
whatever, Trump still insisted he'd won. If that insistence was based
on his actual beliefs, we had-and may yet have again-a president
whose thinking was rooted in world-class epistemic closure. Or, if you
think Trump can tell a hawk from a handsaw, we have a world-class liar
with the world's worst case of narcissism.

So, the search for other defenses must go on.

**The Wall Street Journal**'s editorial
<[link removed]>
on the indictment may have set the standard for the ridiculousness to
which Trump's defenders are driven. Consider these two gems from the

**Journal**'s list of particulars:

If there was a conspiracy, it was by a gang of misfits ... [For which
reason] the conspiracy had no chance of success.

By which standard, no one could ever be accused of attempted murder,
since the would-be killers couldn't pull it off.

And:

We've argued that an indictment of a former President should be based
on serious charges with enough evidence to convince most Americans that
it is justly brought. We doubt most Republicans will see this one in
that light ...

Well, of course most Republicans won't see it in that light. They've
been bombarded by, among other things, decades of Rupert Murdoch's
propagandists, of whom the

**Journal** editorialists constitute the elite, to reject anything
coming out of a Democratic government, or any government not controlled
by Murdoch-friendly right-wingers, as dangerous and corrupt.

**Journal** editorials and Fox News have provided the bulk of the
blinkers that shield Republicans from facts. An honest editorial would
at least take credit for that.

Finally, before they even get to trial, Trump's lawyers will seek to
delay it, and likely move for a change of venue, too. As to the latter,
they need to move the trial to a place where rulers stay in power
because they have the power to stay in power. I'd suggest Russia,
China, or, if all else fails, North Korea.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter <[link removed]>

[link removed]

The Oliver Twist
<[link removed]>
How orphan drugs became big business for Big Pharma BY MAUREEN TKACIK

Merrick Garland Failed America
<[link removed]>
Jack Smith is doing the attorney general's job for him, 28 months
after it should have been done. BY RYAN COOPER

Apollo Stands to Win From Yellow's Collapse
<[link removed]>
The trucking company's demise reads like a history of modern
capitalism. BY JAROD FACUNDO

The Unholy Alliance Between 'Certified' Clean Natural Gas Producers
and the Certifying Companies
<[link removed]>
An independent report casts doubt on the credibility of a major gas
certification company. BY HANNAH STORY BROWN

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