'Tired and laughable' Trump bid to avoid violent threat blame buried by legal expert

Responding to a Donald Trump Thanksgiving diatribe aimed at Judge Arthur Engoron, New York Attorney General Letitia James and courthouse employees, former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance called the former president and his lawyers' claims that he can't be held responsible for their lives being threatened "laughable."

On her "Civil Discourse" Substack platform, Vance wrote that the Department of Justice had every justification to make a Thanksgiving filing imploring the Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia to intercede as the threats that follow Trump's Truth Social ranting increase and become more threatening— in particular the ones aimed at Engoron principal law clerk Alison Greenfield.

First writing, "Around half of the 20-30 calls per day to the law clerk’s personal cell phone and 30-50 messages daily on social media platforms and personal email addresses are antisemitic," the former prosecutor wrote, "it’s Trump’s targeting of Judge Engoron’s law clerk that tell us the most about what the country has to fear if Trump regains power."

After noting that the threats to Greenfield resulted in "275 single spaced pages to transcribe all of them," in the filing, Vance wrote, "This is a deliberate attack on a blameless private citizen, made by Trump in order to advance his own agenda."

"Someone who feels safe and anonymous today could be the recipient of Trump’s ire tomorrow simply because they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time and he needs a victim to distract from whatever trouble he is in at the moment," she predicted before adding, "Trump filed a response today, insinuating that he is not to blame for what other people do."

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"But that is a tired and laughable effort to shirk blame at this point. Even if Trump might have argued, years ago, that he was unaware of the effect his words had on his followers, that time is long past," she continued. "Trump continues to be a danger to us. Anyone who doesn’t understand that they or someone they love, their children or grandchildren, could be the next one subjected to the treatment Judge Engoron’s law clerk is receiving, or that Fulton County election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss were subjected to, isn’t paying attention."

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