What's Really Stopping a Trump Prosecution?
Hurdles, Real and Imagined

Luppe B. Luppen
Jun 20

On Saturday, in an apparent effort to prick the momentum generated by the January 6th Committee’s recent public hearings, the New York Times published a story headlined “Despite Growing Evidence, a Prosecution of Trump Would Face Challenges.”

The headline, of course, is substantially true. Any prosecution of a powerful, well-resourced person for a serious crime faces challenges, no matter the strength of the evidence arrayed against them, and those challenges grow geometrically when the person in question is a former president who sits at the top of a fanatical mass movement that’s willing to pursue its goals without ethical or legal restraints and that elevates personal fealty to him over adherence to factual reality or a set of pre-agreed rules. Nevertheless, the story is misbegotten, and I think it’s important to understand why.

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[T]he paper is asserting that any conceivable offense the federal government might charge Trump with would include a particular knowledge element... This is, not to put too fine a point on it, horseshit.

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