criminal intent and knowledge matter in these indictments... here is some evidence

I still don't get it. Even if they can't prove insurrection in court, wouldn't they at least charge him so he loses the election?

trump's intent and knowledge are at the heart of this. 

This is all strengthening his chances, they must know this.

ntent is a central factor in the crime. it's not just wanting to know motive just for kicks... if he didn't have knowledge or intent, then no crime was committed. that's what the article says. you are confusing motive with criminal intent. n

Then why are his poll numbers improving?

you are making the opposite argument of what the law is. 

Is there something wrong with our system, just to take a step back, in that you could imagine a President who sincerely believed there was fraud pushing something like this really far without breaking the law?

Well, let’s just take a real-world example. There are people who commit murder and say, “I sincerely believed that the devil was telling me that I had to commit this murder to save the soul of whomever.” And that does not absolve them of culpability, necessarily. It might support a defense of not guilty by reason of insanity, in which you did not have the ability to appreciate the wrongfulness of your action. But it’s not a get-out-of-jail-free card.

are you seriously arguing the new yorker made a typo? 

the whole article is reinforcing the headline.

why did trump say pence was being too honest?

 even beyond the headline, the article starts out defining specific intent and that it matters if trump thought the election was stolen. 

if you can't admit you're wrong here, it's just a case either of reading comprehension on your part, or more likely a case of 'you can't change a person's mind even when the facts are against them'. 

I want to talk about proving the President’s state of mind, which seems to be the most contested aspect of how to interpret this indictment. Can you explain why that’s so important, if you think it is important, and what you think prosecutors need to accomplish on this score?

Well, any time you’re talking about criminal charges, state of mind is important. In legal parlance, it’s mens rea, and there are very, very few crimes in the U.S. code that do not require a state of mind that involves the intent to commit the crime that you’re charged with. That’s called specific intent or even general intent. There are very few that say regardless of your intent, you can be held criminally culpable.

So the detail in the indictment shows that the President was advised multiple times by people working for him, by state officials, by his own Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General, that there was simply no factual basis to find that there had been any kind of election fraud on a scale that would be outcome-determinative. Of course, the former President has been trying for two and a half years to continue to say the election was stolen, I think in part to be able to make an argument, “This is what I truly believed.”

The indictment frequently uses the word “knowingly” about Trump when it refers to all these things he’s accused of doing. And, like you say, it presents evidence that a lot of people, people in his Administration, various secretaries of state, were telling him that his claims of fraud were wrong. But you could point to all kinds of things that his advisers told him time and again during the course of his Administration that were true that I think he probably sincerely does not believe. Now you could say, “Well, that’s because he’s an idiot,” or whatever else the reason might be. But the most striking part of the indictment may be where he tells Pence, “You’re too honest,” because that was a sign of him really understanding that there’s something wrong with this. The other examples didn’t seem to me to necessarily show that.

There are other things like the Pence example in there. But, remember, this is ultimately going to be a question for the jury to determine. Did he honestly believe there was fraud in the election, or is that just an excuse right now to not only try to get reëlected and campaign on that but also to try to avoid criminal responsibility? And so that’s one of the reasons you see time after time in the indictment the fact that he was told by all of his closest advisers, by the investigators actually investigating these claims, that there was no merit to them. You can’t stick your head in the sand and ignore all of the evidence and say, “I had a firm belief.” I mean, you could do that, but it’ll be up to the jury to determine.

There are other examples in the indictment where he does seem to reveal that he was aware that the claims of fraud were overblown, or that what people like John Eastman were telling him he could do was not, in fact, lawful. One is the comment you raised about him saying to Mike Pence, “You’re too honest.” But there’s also another time where he’s given the option by John Eastman, and someone else tells him, “There’s not actually authority for this.” And he says, “Well, I like what that guy said anyway.” So there’s another tell that he’s aware.

I don’t know exactly what the legal standard is, but isn’t it that you have to at least try to make a good-faith effort to learn the facts if you’re in Trump’s position? You can’t just stick your head in the sand?

The jury, as part of its instructions, has to determine whether things were done knowingly. There’ll be instructions with respect to each one of the charges. In these crimes, I wouldn’t necessarily say that there’s a legal duty to go do a certain amount of due diligence for Trump. But I think it really comes down to, again, ultimately a fact question. Did he actually believe there was fraud, or was he using that to try to be the basis for the schemes that are alleged in these conspiracies and indictments so that he could remain in power? And I think if everything in this indictment is proved, there’s pretty overwhelming evidence that he knew full well what he was doing and he did it anyway in order to stay in office. But, like I said, that’s a jury question.

You said in an earlier answer, essentially, “Well, everyone’s telling him that there’s no fraud.” Could he say, “Well, actually, some people were telling me there was, and some of these people were in fact my lawyers, and so I listened to them, and that’s what you’re supposed to do, listen to your lawyers.” Could he blame them?
He is probably going to try to make an advice-of-counsel defense involving both Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman. But that defense requires certain things that I don’t think he’s going to be able to establish here. And, for one thing, both of them are co-conspirators who I expect will be indicted sometime in the future. A lawyer who is part of the conspiracy himself will cause an advice-of-counsel claim to falter. In other words, you can’t find a lawyer who’s part of the conspiracy or joins you in a conspiracy and tells you what to do and then say, “I was relying on advice of counsel.” That’s probably a better way to put it.

Well, any time you’re talking about criminal charges, state of mind is important. In legal parlance, it’s mens rea, and there are very, very few crimes in the U.S. code that do not require a state of mind that involves the intent to commit the crime that you’re charged with. That’s called specific intent or even general intent. There are very few that say regardless of your intent, you can be held criminally culpable.

There are other things like the Pence example in there. But, remember, this is ultimately going to be a question for the jury to determine. Did he honestly believe there was fraud in the election, or is that just an excuse right now to not only try to get reëlected and campaign on that but also to try to avoid criminal responsibility? And so that’s one of the reasons you see time after time in the indictment the fact that he was told by all of his closest advisers, by the investigators actually investigating these claims, that there was no merit to them. You can’t stick your head in the sand and ignore all of the evidence and say, “I had a firm belief.” I mean, you could do that, but it’ll be up to the jury to determine.

if motive doesn't matter in determining his guilt, why would proving his motive even matter? 

you are making the opposite argument of what the law is. 

 and then you try to spin everything in the article as having to do with motive and not the state of mind or mens rea of trump

 maybe the new yorker made no mistake, and you are simply mistaken on how you perceive the article?

anyways, motive isn't necessary in proving guilt if a mens rea isn't required in the law.

made a whole article about how the prosecurtion wants to determine motive just to avoid a run away jury.

plus you are really trying to weasle your way into trying to spin the article

trump had to knowingly and without mistake about the circumstances, break the law.

i've concluded that you don't have a reading comprehension problem... you have a psychological problem. my argument is plainly in the article and we have to assume a lot of ridiculous stuff to make your argument make sense