'Didn't know any better': Columnist argues Trump's strategy should be that he believed his own claims

A potential Donald Trump defense strategy has emerged since he was indicted for efforts to overturn the 2020 election, a Washington Post columnist wrote Wednesday – plead ignorance.

The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake notes that Trump’s defenders in the immediate aftermath of the newest charges against the former president have signaled a “didn’t know any better” legal strategy.

MSNBC host Ari Melber earlier this year likened this defense strategy to George Costanza after the Seinfeld character’s comment in an episode: “Remember, it’s not a lie if you believe it.”

Blake notes that Trump attorney John Lauro, during an appearance on Fox News Tuesday night, suggested a potential argument is that Trump believed the falsehoods, and therefore coudn't have had intent to commit crimes that are the basis of his indictments.

“I would like them to try to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Donald Trump believed that these allegations were false,” Lauro said.

Blake notes that Lauro’s argument has merit, and that it will be special counsel Jack Smith’s burden to prove Trump knew he lost the 2020 election, not Lauro’s to prove otherwise.

Trump’s spokeswoman Alina Habba made a similar argument Tuesday during an appearance on Fox News, telling host Jesse Watters that “everybody that knows Donald Trump and has read his [social-media posts] know, he still believes the election was stolen, and he has good cause to believe so.”

Blake writes that “The argument from his own spokeswoman isn’t that the election necessarily was stolen, mind you, just that Trump has cause to believe that. Habba also cited not Trump’s most far-fetched claims, but rather “ballot harvesting” and ‘things of that nature.’ (This is a trend with Republicans that dates back to the post-2020 election period: offering watered-down claims about election problems that don’t actually come close to matching Trump’s claims.)”

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