Politics makes for strange bedfellows, but so far George Conway hasn’t ended up being asked to represent Donald Trump. That doesn’t mean that he didn’t have an interesting conversation with fellow Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus, when the two sat down and speculated about it recently.
Ruth Marcus: So imagine the unimaginable, which is: You are Donald Trump’s lawyer. In addition to getting him to pay up a very fat retainer in advance, what is the best advice you can give him at this point? What is the best way for his lawyers to defend him?
George Conway: I would tell him that he needs to own up to it and plead guilty and work out a deal with the government. One of the things that the Justice Department will consider doing in settling, in plea-bargaining political corruption cases, is to take a commitment from the defendant, an enforceable commitment from the defendant, not to hold public office again, to resign. [Vice President Spiro] Agnew had to resign as part of his nolo contendere plea in 1973.
And so what I would say is, you need to work out the best deal possible, and you just have to say, you’re just gonna leave public life and pay a fine, and I’d do my best to keep him out of prison.
He’s never going to agree with that. He’s not going to plead. But that would be his best move: I’ll leave the republic alone, and you leave me alone.
Marcus: In a situation like this, where [special counsel] Jack Smith works for an administration whose president is running for reelection and is running against Trump, where Trump is the likely GOP nominee, would it be even proper for Smith to make it a condition of the never-going-to-happen agreement with Trump that he would retire from public life?
Conway: The problem with it, of course, is that even the suggestion of it that came from the Justice Department would be pointed to by Trump and his supporters as “Ah, this is why you’re doing that.” And in a sense, they’re not wrong. One of the reasons we have to do this, why we have to make sure we enforce the law, is so that somebody can’t do this again.
It’s been said before that the only good thing to come out of the debacle of the Trump Era is that it gives the United States an opportunity to shore up weaknesses in presidential power and perhaps even in the Constitution itself. I would be very surprised if, in the future, we don’t see some limitations on the scope of the presidential pardon power, so that a future corrupt president, God forbid there is one but there might be, can’t pardon his criminal allies with the ease that Trump has, and certainly not pardon himself. The idea of self-pardon is reprehensible to any nothing of law and fair play.
There is dialogue afoot that the Trump trial(s) should be televised. That’s a good idea, too. Neal Katyal said, “The upcoming trial of United States v. Donald J. Trump will rank with Marbury v. Madison, Brown v. Board of Education and Dred Scott v. Sandford as a defining moment for our history and our values as a people.”
He also made the point, “A criminal trial is all about witnesses and credibility, and the demeanor of participants plays a big role. A cold transcript cannot convey the emotion on a defendant’s face when a prosecution witness is on the stand, or how he walks into the courtroom each day.”
America needs to see Trump as he really is. MAGA, in particular, needs to see Trump as he really is, a scared little mouse — rat, actually — and not the big blustering billionaire behemoth, Baron of bullshit that they fantasize him to be.
Interesting days ahead for this country.
TFG’s lawyers have already stated they want the trial televised, so there should be no problem. At the very least, we should get a live audio stream. Sometimes a person’s voice can bolster or detract from their credibility.
Hearing Trump is always better than reading what he said. He’s not that awful in a transcript. He sounds emphatically stupid when you actually listen to him.
I hope this gets televised. That’s something the reality TV actor never thought of, that TV would record his path to disgrace and incarceration.
The only problem I can foresee about having cameras in the courtroom is how the hell will his lawyers ensure that Trump won’t start playing to them or making an absolute spectacle of himself, especially when he realizes that the cameras will NOT be focused on him exclusively?
Trump can’t do anything other than bluster.
It’s all he is.
That’s ALL he has ever had, with his business knowledge limited to an appearance on a TV show, to say “You’re fired”, and a history of nothing but failures, losing money in the gambling business where the House gets a minimum of 15% take for business costs, even a little money in his pocket … He probably grabbed the money bags everyday and put them in his own safe …
Always claiming to be a billionaire, but losing OTHER person’s money instead, with deals that NO real money manager would touch … HE REALLY IS, the world’s BIGGEST LOSER !!!
I disagree on the TV idea. Why give the rotten tomato (orange…) more than anybody else. I can read transcripts just fine. Maybe they could just get a much better sketch artist…some of them have been plain awful…I can’t draw worth beans (unless it’s with a T square and straight edge and I failed Art 101 twice!!!) but so,me of them leave whatever talent they might have had at the courtroom door.