Trump’s Carroll Mistrial Went Up In Flames, But He’ll Argue the Same Baseless Facts In January 6 Trial

As oft noted here and elsewhere, Donald Trump is nothing if not predictable. And what’s interesting about that, is that that is the quality that made Trump and that is the quality that is going to break Trump. His cult formed around his insult comic persona. That was what people came out to hear. That was what all the media outlets broadcast in 2016, giving him publicity that he couldn’t have bought for millions of dollars.

And in 2024, that is the same tired, old dirge that people are getting bored with. Trump has had a lot of rally goers walk out early, simply because he’s not amusing anymore. Now he whines about how he’s persecuted and that gets old. So people leave, not getting enough entertainment bang for their buck, just hearing an unhappy old man complain.

Another repetitive theme in Trump world is how his enemies have destroyed reams of evidence in order to cover their nefarious tracks. That was the basis upon which his lawyers argued before Judge Lewis Kaplan that the E. Jean Carroll trial should be declared a mistrial. Here’s what that looked like.

In short, Trump's team first learned of the deletions in Jan. 2023 and failed to follow up. Nor did they obtain or present clear evidence at trial of what Carroll deleted or when, much less what documents they requested through discovery. 2/

— Lisa Rubin (@lawofruby) February 7, 2024

The bottom line, says Kaplan, is that what Trump's team pointed to as evidence of discovery misconduct was both too late and too imprecise to warrant either a mistrial or other sanctions, especially since they never showed that the messages were unrecoverable. 4/

— Lisa Rubin (@lawofruby) February 7, 2024

In other words, it’s Trump’s lawyers pissing in the proverbial wind, one more time. And make no mistake, this is the exact argument that Trump has been making about January 6, that there are reams of evidence, important material, that has been deleted. Bennie Thompson made it clear years ago that the only material that was ever deleted, pertaining to January 6, were fax transmittal sheets and other superfluous items, nothing of substance.

But Trump, having the mentality of an uber conspiracy theorist, won’t accept that for an answer. Does this ring bells?

This is a link to a Public Notice article published last month. A modified version of this Trump diatribe was presented to Judge Lewis, with zero result, and I daresay that when the January 6 trial finally gets scheduled again (it was originally on calendar for March 4) Trump will bring up this same argument again. I share with you a few comments about how Trump’s efforts fell apart because as soon as Judge Tanya Chutkan puts the case back on the docket, this is what you will hear again.

A year on, Loudermilk’s promises to pin the blame for January 6 on Nancy Pelosi have come to nothing. He’s been even less effective than Oversight Chair James Comer in his relentless quest to find a reason to impeach President Biden. Although, to his credit, Loudermilk does manage to at least fail quietly.

But what happens on Fox doesn’t stay on Fox, and before long Trump’s lawyers had seized on the supposed destruction of evidence in their quest to undermine the election interference case.

In October, they moved to subpoena Loudermilk, Thompson, Sauber, Meyer, the National Archives, the Clerk of the House of Representatives, and the Committee on House Administration, as the successor entity to the January 6 Select Committee, about the supposedly “missing” evidence which would exonerate their client. Mumbling vaguely about “significant overlap between the Select Committee’s investigation and this case,” Trump’s team demanded “The Select Committee Missing Materials” and all congressional communications with respect to them, both internally and with the executive branch.

In a follow-up brief in November, they alluded to the theory that the “missing” materials related to Trump’s false claim that Speaker Pelosi turned down his offer of 10,000 National Guard members to prevent violence on January 6.

“President Trump is entitled to all evidence regarding widely reported decisions made by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser to not deploy the National Guard, which was authorized and made available by President Trump, on January 6, even if the Committee wrongfully disposed of those materials before disbanding,” they wrote.

Needless to say, Trump’s lawyers provided no citation for this “widely reported” claim, nor did they state any reason to believe that the proof of Pelosi’s supposed perfidy could be found in the subpoenaed documents.

But the special counsel and his team of highly competent lawyers simply rolled their eyes and noted that Trump’s legal team had already gotten the Secret Service documents back in August.

It’s worth taking time to read the whole article because I promise you, you’re going to get a replay of the same fantasy world arguments when Judge Chutkan sets a date. This is how Trump rolls. This is how all of the lawyers he surrounds himself with roll. It’s all a conspiracy against their blameless client, doncha know? They are not fact driven people, to say the very least.

But, for the moment, Trump has suffered another loss and we await developments on his ongoing cases and a verdict in the Trump Organization fraud trial. Today was another joyless day in Trump world. Even the ketchup bottles are suffering from ennui.

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