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On Sunday morning,\u00a0Meet the Press<\/em>\u00a0aired an interview with\u00a0Donald Trump<\/strong><\/a> during which, to the surprise of exactly no one, the ex-president told<\/a> a ridiculous amount of lies<\/a> about everything from the cost of bacon (it\u2019s not five times what it was when he was president) to infanticide (spoiler alert, Democrats do not actually support this practice). Probably a slightly bigger deal in the grand scheme of things, though? The moment when Trump blew up a key legal defense in his January 6 case and made the Justice Department\u2019s job to win a conviction a whole lot easier.<\/p>\n That happened<\/a> when Trump, asked by NBC\u2019s Kristen Welker<\/strong> if he was \u201ccalling the shots\u2026ultimately\u201d on trying to overturn the 2020 election\u2014as opposed to simply taking the advice of his lawyers\u2014responded, \u201cas to whether or not I believed it was rigged? Oh, sure. It was my decision.\u201d<\/p>\n This content can also be viewed on the site it originates<\/a> from.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As more than one legal expert subsequently noted, this was a wildly damning admission on the ex-president\u2019s part. \u201cDonald Trump\u2019s defense to January 6 has been one basic thing, which is, \u2018I relied on the advice of my lawyers, I didn\u2019t have bad criminal intent, it\u2019s my lawyers who were telling me to do this,\u2019\u201d former acting solicitor general Neal Katyal<\/strong> told<\/a> MSNBC\u2019s Jen Psaki.<\/strong> \u201cAnd she got him, through masterful interviewing and playing to his ego, to be like, \u2018Oh, no, I did it all myself.\u2019 And if you\u2019re Jack Smith<\/strong> this morning, you\u2019re going \u2018Thank you, that\u2019s what I always thought, and yes you hired these kind of cockamamie, crazy lawyers, but at the end of the day this was you through and through.\u2019 This demonstrates his kind of culpability right there and then, and I think makes this case\u2026a lot easier.\u201d<\/p>\n Similarly noting how thoroughly incriminating the interview was, former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann<\/strong> told Psaki: \u201cThe other thing that Kristen Welker got the president to say was essentially a part of this scheme, a part of this obstruction, a part of the 241 civil rights scheme, which is the stop of the electoral count. If you\u2019ll remember, everyone thought there would be a red mirage, that the night of the election, Trump would be ahead because the mail-in votes had not been counted. And sure enough, Trump had said, \u2018Stop counting.\u2019 Well, that\u2019s a crime. He was saying at the time, and he just said it on air, to NBC, \u2018Stop counting the votes.\u2019 Well, that\u2019s not allowed. That is part of the scheme here. So there\u2019s sort of a twofer here. One, as Neal said, not relying on counsel, and two, saying that he wanted to stop the votes of American citizens.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n This content can also be viewed on the site it originates<\/a> from.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nX content<\/h4>\n
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