'Commas matter': CNN legal analyst breaks down crucial new piece of evidence against Trump
Former Vice President Mike Pence is saying that a typographical error in his book obscured a serious moment in which he admonished former President Donald Trump against his plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Specifically, the former vice president told special counsel Jack Smith's team about the errant insertion of a comma in the statement "You know, I don't have the authority to change the outcome of the election," which made it look as if Pence was simply explaining it wouldn't work, when in reality he was scolding Trump that he knew it was illegal and was doing it anyway.
That tiny distinction could make a huge difference in the legal evidence at Trump's trials for election interference, said former federal prosecutor Elie Honig on Tuesday's edition of "CNN This Morning."
"Can we get at the commas for a moment?" asked anchor Poppy Harlow. "You read it, 'You know, I don't have the authority to change the outcome of the election on January 6th' or 'You know I don't have the authority.' I mean, that is a huge difference, is it not? What would it do for the prosecution? Pence is saying it's the latter."
"Commas matter," said Honig. "Every word matters. Every piece of punctuation matters. Think how that changes the meaning of this sentence. It's writing with a comma, which means 'you know' in the conversational sense. You know, sir, I don't think I have the authority to do that. Without the comma, which Pence says the comma shouldn't be there, you know, Donald Trump, you know that I don't think I have the authority to throw out the election. So that comma may seem trivial but makes a difference in the meaning of the sentence."
"Pence could take the stand when this goes to trial," said anchor Phil Mattingly. "If you're Trump's lawyers, how do you cross-examine and question Pence as a witness?"
"Yeah, I think there is a couple of things," said Honig. "First of all, Mike Pence wrote a book where he came out with some of the details, many details, but not all of them. I think the argument you will hear from Trump's lawyers is, anything he didn't put in the book is what we call a recent fabrication, something he made up after the fact. He has said that at times he believed there were irregularities in the voting, though ultimately he comes around to at view there was in evidence of fraud. I think he will press Mike Pence on the fact that Donald Trump was hearing different pieces of advice from different advisors, some seen as more responsible telling Trump there is no evidence of fraud, others say there was evidence of fraud and push ahead. Defense lawyers for Trump are going to focus on the latter part."
Watch the video below or at the link here.
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