On Friday's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough argued that Donald Trump's attempt to push his federal trial related to January 6th back to 2026 is evidence of his consciousness of guilt. It's "not how an innocent person acts,"
Scarborough and Robert Gibbs, a former Obama White House spokesman, had this typical Democrat-spin exchange:
GIBBS: Joe, if I had accused you of half of the stuff that Donald Trump has done, you'd be rushing to a courthouse tomorrow --
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Exactly!
GIBBS: -- to try to clear your name. Not waiting until 2026.
SCARBOROUGH: Yeah. And that's the point, right, isn't it, Robert? That if you or I were accused of something we didn't do, and we had a presidential election ahead of time, I would be telling my lawyers, get me to court as quickly as possible. I'm going to bury these people in court. Then I'm going to bury them on the campaign trail. He's doing the exact opposite.
I mean, that's not how an innocent person acts.
Really, Joe? Defendants don't get to rule on whether they're innocent or not. Juries do. On MSNBC, Trump is presumed guilty as soon as he's indicted (well, it didn't take an indictment).
Would he have advised Hillary Clinton to rush to court in 2016 if she'd been indicted on her email scandal? If Scarborough were Trump's lawyer, even if he firmly believed in his innocence, would he really be advising him to "get to court as quickly as possible?"
Joe: You are aware the court in question in the January 6 trial is located in Washington, DC, right? Aren't you the same guy that we caught earlier this week fretting over the optics of Trump being tried on charges of trying to overturn the 2020 Georgia election results in Fulton County, where 72% of voters went for Biden? You wondered how people would react if in the future, a Democratic president were prosecuted in Holmes County, Florida, where Trump won 87% of the vote.
If those two situations raise red flags, what about Washington, D.C., Joe, where the jury would be selected from a pool in which voters went for Biden over Trump by an overwhelming margin of 92 percent to 5 percent?
Moreover, Joe, you pointed out that even if Trump were extremely successful, gaining acquittal on 89 of the 90 charges against him, conviction on just the one remaining charge could amount to a life sentence!
To quote your idol, Joe: c'mon man! Urging Trump to rush to be tried in D.C. could constitute malpractice!
And here we thought you were The World's Greatest Simple Country Lawyer!
Note: Gibbs did make the point that Trump is essentially running to stay out of jail. That strategy hinges on him winning the election, which in turn favors a postponement of his trials.
Joe Scarborough saying that if Trump were innocent of the charges brought by Jack Smith against him in Washington, DC in connection with January 6th was sponsored in part by Booking.com, ADT, Google, Servpro, Jeep, and Liberty Mutual.
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC
Morning Joe
8/18/23
6:23 am EDTROBERT GIBBS: I do wonder if he watched this, is this a realization by Donald Trump that he is in much more significant trouble than he's ever led on to the fact.
Look, Joe, if I had accused you of half of the stuff that Donald Trump has done, you'd be rushing to a courthouse tomorrow --
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Exactly!
GIBBS: -- to try to clear your name. Not waiting until 2026.
SCARBOROUGH: Yeah. And that's the point, right, isn't it, Robert? That if you or I were accused of something we didn't do, and we had a presidential election ahead of time, I would be telling my lawyers, get me to court as quickly as possible. I'm going to bury these people in court. Then I'm going to bury them on the campaign trail. He's doing the exact opposite.
He actually -- he's been accused of stealing nuclear secrets, he's been accused of stealing plans to, to, to -- war plans on invading Iran. He's been accused of trying to steal American democracy. And he's saying, oh, let's just let that hover out there. Let's not find out whether I was guilty or not until a year or two after the election.
I mean, that's not how an innocent person acts. It's a great point.
. . .
Robert, I don't see how he gets from here to there as far as running a political campaign, because even his, his biggest defenders on Fox News have said legally, of the let's say 90 indictments, if he's convicted on one of them. Like, he could go 89-1, but that one conviction, that's a life sentence!
How do you run effectively for president with life in jail staring, staring at you?
GIBBS: Well, one certainly hypothesis is, you run because you feel that's the only way you can get out of those 90 counts. That somehow you can go 90-0 if you get elected president and ask your new attorney general to get rid of some of these cases.
If you buy time and get the Justice Department to write memos that you can't be tried while you're in office. There's been, you know, supporters of the former president have said as much. That he's running, essentially, to stay out of jail.
