Trump schmoozing with MAGA rioters makes it 'impossible' to defend him to a jury: legal expert

Former President Donald Trump went out of his way to praise and embrace a convicted Capitol rioter who has called for killing former Vice President Mike Pence and members of Congress at a campaign stop in New Hampshire this week.

Speaking to MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace on Friday's edition of "Deadline: White House," former Justice Department prosecutor Andrew Weissman outlined how this actually hurts Trump's defense if charges are ever filed against him in special counsel Jack Smith's investigation of the attack.

"I just have to say, he's never been against [January 6]," said Wallace. "The day it happened, he said, we love you, as the riot was underway, he — there's not a single piece of evidence that he didn't love it."

"If you're Jack Smith, you are worried about what is defense counsel going to say? Because defense counsel is going to try to think of any argument," said Weissman. "I totally agree with you, it is that Donald Trump has made it impossible to put up the defense of, I was surprised by what happened, and I was against it, or I saw what was happening and I was unnerved or I thought, okay, maybe it's a good thing. But essentially what's happening is Donald Trump sees that he is going to be indicted for leading the January 6th insurrection. So of course he's saying, I was leading with legal and he's going to be charged with being the head of this."

"So you think his defense now is going to be that the insurrection was legal?" said Wallace.

"Look, I don't know what he's going to actually say," said Weissman. "I don't want to be his defense counsel in terms of trying to figure out a defense. But usually ... you try to figure out something about your intent, that this was something that, you know, I didn't intend for this to happen. He's making it impossible by his actions now, his own direct actions where he's literally embracing people who participated and saying they should be pardoned, that this was a good thing. He's making it impossible to come up with any plausible defense to a jury on this. I think he's playing a political game, but that's not going to play to a D.C. jury. You know, this is — we talked about this. There is a political angle. And what will happen in a court of law, we're seeing it in the E. Jean Carroll case where facts and law matter. So he's playing in a different field, and if you say it's black, I say it's white. I think Russia is good. I don't think Russia is bad."

"If you're serving our country, you're a sucker," chimed in Wallace.

"Exactly," said Weissman. "It is so anti-government, anti-fact, anti-science, anti-law ... it is not a legal defense."

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