“Well, we don’t care, and we’re not going to leave. The boss is not going to leave under any circumstances. We are just going to stay in power.”
The quote above is one of the reasons Donald Trump is more desperate to avoid his election-tampering trial in Georgia than any of the other judicial reckonings he faces, and it’s one of the reasons anyone still supporting Trump is at best an idiot and at worst a traitor.
Trump aide Dan Scavino reportedly said those words to former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis of Dec. 19, 2020, when Ellis told him they were running out of legal options to challenge the 2020 election results.
If it doesn’t terrify Trump that Ellis agreed to testify in the Georgia case in return for a plea bargain, it ought to.
Testimony from Ellis and two other Trump attorneys — Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell — completely demolishes Trump’s claims that he had no criminal intent because he truly believed he had won the election. Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that on Dec. 11, 2020, after Trump learned he had lost his Supreme Court appeal, he said this to Mark Meadows:
“I don’t want people to know we lost, Mark. This is embarrassing. Figure it out. We need to figure it out.”
One of Trump’s chief excuses for his criminal behavior has been that he was acting on advice of counsel. That’s not a legitimate defense, but all his attorneys have abandoned him except the one who went from being America’s Mayor in 2001 to America;s drunk and crazy grandpa 20 years later.
Yes, Rudy Giuliani.
Trump’s only real hope is if he can sneak some of his Trumpanzees onto juries and get them to hang. There is no way he will be able to get 12 jurors to acquit him, and with attorneys like Ellis turning state’s evidence, there’s no way he can make any sort of legitimate case for innocence.
It’s going to be a fascinating year.