What was President Trump’s frame of mind when he discussed overturning the 2020 Presidential election? This question apparently is key to the defense of the former President in the case he was indicted for on August 1. If he relied on the bad advice of his attorneys, maybe they were at fault, not the former President. If he actually believed in the allegations of fraud, then perhaps he was victim of mental derangement.
But what about past patterns of behavior that extend least five years before the alleged plot to overturn the election? Don’t they reveal what the former President might have thought when he plotted to reverse the election results? Doesn’t a pattern of past behavior shed light on the President’s intent during the months following his defeat at the polls?
I am not an attorney, but I know that in federal crimes habit or routine practice can be allowed as evidence at trial.
Rule 406. Habit; Routine Practice
Evidence of a person’s habit or an organization’s routine practice may be admitted to prove that on a particular occasion the person or organization acted in accordance with the habit or routine practice. The court may admit this evidence regardless of whether it is corroborated or whether there was an eyewitness. law.cornell.edu/rules/fre/rule_406#:~:text=Evidence%20of%20a%20person’s%20habit,whether%20there%20was%20an%20eyewitness.
The former President has a well-documented track record of raising the issue of fraud whenever he anticipated or evaluated the results of an election would go against him. Even when his program “The Apprentice” failed to win an Emmy Award he complained, “Emmys are all politics.” [https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/timeline-donald-trumps-election-denial-claims-republican-politicians/story?id=89168408.] Donald Trump has a sore loser mentality.
In 2016 primaries:
- He employed the allegation of fraud in 2016 during the GOP primaries, including the Iowa and Colorado caucuses, which he lost to Cruz. “Based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz during the Iowa Caucus, either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified,” Trump tweeted that year without providing evidence.https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/timeline-donald-trumps-election-denial-claims-republican-politicians/story?id=89168408
In the final weeks of the 2016 race,
- “Law Enforcement has been strongly notified to watch closely for any ILLEGAL VOTING which may take place in Tuesday’s Election (or Early Voting). Anyone caught will be subject to the Maximum Criminal Penalties allowed by law,” he tweeted shortly before Election Day.
During his term in office
- After his surprise victory, Trump investigated the causes of his losing the popular vote. He appointed a Presidential commission at the beginning of his term, but the panel disbanded (CNN) with no conclusions to support Trump’s claims that millions voted illegally in 2016, costing him the popular vote.
- During the 2018 Mid-term campaign: With the rise of mail-in ballots, President Trump voiced the unproven claim that mail-in ballots were more susceptible to fraud. “Mail ballots, they cheat. People cheat,” Trump said Tuesday, when asked if states should expand absentee voting during the pandemic. “Mail ballots are very dangerous thing for this country because they’re cheaters. They go and collect them. They’re fraudulent in many cases.” [https://www.cnn.com/factsfirst/politics/factcheck_33b225f3-5d02-4f2c-abca-41e694c90b4f]
In the 2020 campaign,
- He claimed in August 2020 that “the only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged.”
- And in mid-December 2020, after the Electoral College had officially selected Biden as the next president, “This Fake Election can no longer stand. Get moving Republicans,” he (Trump) tweeted.
And since the violence of January 6, 2020, the former President has repeatedly used the allegations of election fraud to cast himself as a victim of government conspiracy. Among his dedicated followers those allegations have confirmed he is under attack from a liberal establishment.
The consistency of the ex-President’s allegations of fraud suggest that it is more of a strategy for discrediting an election than a protest against improprieties of voting. Why would he discredit all elections that go against him or his Party, if he wasn’t merely trying to excuse or reverse his losses? Does this not suggest a pattern of behavior of a sore loser?
Can anyone explain why the former President’s past behavior should not add to the growing evidence of complicity with insurrection in the January 6 investigation? It proves that the ex-President was obsessed with supposed plots against him, giving him a prime motive to take back power with whatever means at his disposal.
The “Sore-Loser” strategy reveals the ex-President’s victim mentality, but it is possible that he suffers from chronic paranoia, which would make it likely he sincerely believed he was a victim of fraud? That may be settled by the prosecution’s interviews with Mike Pence, with Mark Meadows’ writers/editors and with other campaign aides, all of whom were privy to conversations about his real motives.
But if that testimony reveals that the ex-President employed these fraud claims to avoid admitting defeat, then his allegations become part of a plot to seize government, a naked power grab to assume power he felt entitled to. That would not be paranoia; that would be presumption of power and a conscious plot to retain the office Donald Trump always thought belonged to him.
If the former President is crazy, he is crazy like a fox.