Legal expert: A lot of taxpayer dollars were used to track down 'drunk Rudy’s frivolous claims of election fraud'
One of the main issues that wasn't discussed in the second public hearing for the House Select Committee hearings on Monday is the degree to which former President Donald Trump's lies were investigated by the government, paid for at taxpayer expense.
Speaking to MSNBC, former House impeachment counsel Dan Goldman pointed out that it isn't something that is discussed because it's an issue that is lower down on the level of importance up against the attempt to overthrow the government.
"It is completely absurd how many government resources, both state and federal, were used to track down drunk Rudy's frivolous claims of election fraud," Goldman said, referencing the fact that Giuliani was intoxicated according to the testimony. "And it's amazing that that could actually occur."
The former assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York noted that this isn't merely an issue of using the government to create a conspiracy for the election, Trump used the government several times to generate his own conspiracies.
"We saw this in the first impeachment with the threats to the whistleblower and the threats to Alex Vindman and the threats to other witnesses, and then you would see Trump's supporters actually execute whatever Trump said, and go and make these threats after his tweets, " said Goldman.
Trump told his supporters to go to the Capitol and "fight like hell," but according to Trump, he didn't really mean it.
"By this point in his presidency, he had to have known," Goldman explained. "There is absolutely no way that he didn't know that every time he says something or tweets something, that his supporters act violently on that. And what Al Schmidt described today is yet another example of that. And this is relevant to what Trump did leading up to and on Jan. 6 itself and it will be very relevant to any criminal investigation into Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the election. All of this goes to it, because the fact that he knew that the election was legitimate and these claims of fraud were completely bogus is central to his intent."
Goldman said that Trump is trying to put his head in the sand and pretend that he honestly believed the lies, but it doesn't work that way.
"And prosecutors should not be afraid of charging him if the evidence is there because he absolutely knew it and they will show that he consciously avoids -- to the extent that he actually believes in his mind that it didn't happen, that conscious avoidance, the willful blindness, putting your head in the sand is not a defense to a criminal charge," he closed.
The same argument was made by former U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance, that the legal term "willful blindness" will ensure that Trump can't pretend he was ignorant of everything and went along with it.
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