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babylonsister

(171,070 posts) Thu Apr 19, 2018, 07:28 PM Apr 2018

Why Do Trumps Defenders Assume Hes Guilty?

Why Do Trump’s Defenders Assume He’s Guilty?

With friends like these, the president should probably reconsider his messaging strategy.
David A. Graham 2:30 PM ET Politics

The presumption of innocence is essential to the American legal system. Sometimes prosecutors and the press need to be reminded of this. It’s not as often that the allies of a defendant, or even a prospective defendant, forget.

Yet allies of President Trump have made some peculiar comments over the last few days, as Jonathan Chait, Josh Barro, and Orin Kerr note. Anthony Scaramucci says Michael Cohen would not flip on Trump because he is “a very loyal person.” Alan Dershowitz, enjoying a strange encore act as Trump’s most prominent legal defender, told Politico, “That’s what they’ll threaten him with: life imprisonment. They’re going to threaten him with a long prison term and try to turn him into a canary that sings.”

Jay Goldberg, who represented Trump in the 1990s and 2000s, told Trump that he needs to be concerned that Cohen will not protect him. “You have to be alert,” Goldberg said. “I don’t care what Michael says.” (The president’s armada of former lawyers, and Trump’s reluctance to ever fully banish anyone, mean that sort-of-former lawyers keep popping up left and right, with advice solicited or not.)

Even Cohen, in his frantic effort to demonstrate his loyalty, has made the error. “I’d rather jump out of a building than turn on Donald Trump,” he told Donnie Deustch.

Turn on him with what, exactly? As Chait and Barro write, these people are at least aspirationally standing up for Trump, and yet their comments have a clear subtext of guilt. They all start with the premise that Trump has something to hide. You can’t flip on someone unless you’ve got something to offer prosecutors. Usually, the defenders of suspects in prosecutors’ cross-hairs loudly proclaim their innocence, and insist that the investigation will ultimately vindicate them. But Trump’s chorus is singing from a different hymnal.

The same worry underlies agitation from the White House about Special Counsel Robert Mueller extracting a guilty plea and offer of cooperation from Rick Gates, the former deputy campaign manager, and about the pressure Mueller is putting on Paul Manafort, the former campaign chairman. Since Manafort was the campaign chair, the only person Mueller could really want him to turn on is Trump himself; and since indictments against Manafort suggest a very strong case, the special counsel presumably doesn’t need Gates to turn on Manafort, and wants his help in getting information on Trump, too.

The appearance of having something to hide also hovers behind Trump’s threats to fire either Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein or Mueller. While there are Trump allies who can concoct claims of wrongdoing by either one, it’s clear that the real point is to restrict the special-counsel probe. Besides, Trump already fired James Comey and said it was because he was upset about the Russia investigation, so there’s precedent. (Trump contradicted his own prior explanation this week.)

Implicit guilt also shadows rumors about Trump offering pardons to Michael Flynn, the former national-security adviser, and to Manafort, as well as the message-pardon granted to Lewis Libby last week. And when Trump seethes at Mueller investigating his financial affairs, and declares the Trump Organization to be on the wrong side of a red line, one wonders what he is so worried about.

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https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/04/why-do-trumps-allies-all-presume-guilt/558422/