How a 2011 Sam Alito opinion could doom Trump in D.C. election fraud case

Former President Donald Trump's attorneys have signaled that they will defend him by claiming that he could not have been trying to defraud the United States in the wake of the 2020 election because he sincerely believed he won.

However, a Supreme Court opinion authored in 2011 by conservative Justice Samuel Alito could knock this defense flat on its face.

In a legal analysis published by The New York Times on Monday, New York University Law School professor Burt Neuborne walks through how the 2011 opinion affirmed that proving willful blindness to the falsity of one's words and actions is legally equivalent to proving someone's consciousness of guilt.

In one particular relevant passage in the ruling, Alito argued that "many criminal statutes require proof that a defendant acted knowingly or willfully, and courts applying the doctrine of willful blindness hold that defendants cannot escape the reach of these statutes by deliberately shielding themselves from clear evidence of critical facts that are strongly suggested by the circumstances."

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As for how this would apply to Trump, Neuborne argued that testimony from multiple former Trump administration officials and campaign officials provides a track record to show that Trump had been told again and again that he had legitimately lost the 2020 election.

Neuborne concludes that "while this argument is not a slam dunk, there’s an excellent chance that 12 jurors will find, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Mr. Trump hid from the truth by adopting willful blindness."