'Foolish': How Trump may regret bid for a hung jury in Espionage Act trial
During an MSNBC panel on reports that lawyers for Donald Trump had urged him to take a plea deal before special counsel Jack Smith slammed him with 37 federal felony charges that could lead to prison time, former prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks suggested the former president will regret wanting to take a chance on a jury trial.
Speaking with MSNBC host Ayman Mohyeldin, Wine-Banks claimed that it appears to her that the former president is banking on one juror balking at voting for a conviction in a federal trial that requires a unanimous verdict.
However, she noted, that could just lead to the DOJ re-trying him over and over again.
"One of Trump's attorneys suggested proposing a settlement over the classified documents case that would preclude charges," the MSNBC host began. "This is just one of many instances in which Trump's legal team has urged him to cooperate, to avoid in this case a federal criminal indictment that ended up being 37 counts against him. But it seems that Trump wasn't interested in negotiating a settlement. What do you make of that?"
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'"That he is foolish," Wine -Banks replied. "That he should have followed his lawyer's advice."
"If you look at the statistics and convictions in these kinds of cases, he has a very poor chance of surviving without being found guilty," she added. "I know he's counting on 'I will have one supporter on the jury and it will be a hung jury.' That just means he'll get tried again."
"So, he should have followed the advice, and he should have pursued a possible plea deal," she continued. "That's what Vice President [Spiro] Agnew did. He got a deal so that he would have a better outcome than if he had gone to trial on the bribery charges that he was facing."
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