Trump aide says ex-president is already 'bracing for the impact of conviction'
Donald Trump is deploying a strategy in the event that he is found guilty in his criminal hush money case.
As his fate lies in the hands of a jury of his peers, the former president is readying the hatches for the scenario that he's found culpable of committing the crimes of falsifying business records in order to influence the 2016 election.
"Listen, I think Trump world is really bracing for the impact of a conviction," ex-White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah Griffin said while appearing on CNN's "The Situation Room" with Wolf Blitzer. "There's clearly already a bit of a strategy underway."
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She says the subordinates are being tapped to go on the offensive to turn the screws on the judge while others are banging the president's "witch hunt" drum and "calling into question the entire process itself."
Already carrying the 45th president's water while he's bound by the terms of a narrow gag order in the case, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R - NY) filed a misconduct claim calling into question how Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan was assigned to the historic case.
“If justices were indeed being randomly assigned in the Criminal Term, the probability of two specific criminal cases being assigned to the same justice is quite low, and the probability of three specific criminal cases being assigned to the same justice is infinitesimally small.
"And yet, we see Acting Justice Merchan on all three cases,” reads the complaint.
“The simple answer to why Acting Justice Merchan has been assigned to these cases would seem to be that whoever made the assignment intentionally selected Acting Justice Merchan to handle them to increase the chance that Donald Trump, the Trump Organization, and Steven Bannon would ultimately be convicted,” it adds.
Prior to presiding over the case, Merchan had admitted donating $35 to President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign and his Democratic strategist daughter's fundraising work came to light early on.
The New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct evaluated the donations and cautioned the judge, but didn't advise him to recuse himself.
The strategy, Griffin suggests, is to prepare for the Armageddon scenario that the presumptive Republican nominee could become a convict.
"So what you're doing is laying the groundwork because this is out of his control," she said. "He does not know where the jury is going to come down.
"There's a very real chance he could be convicted, so he needs his outside allies out there convincing the public that there was something untoward here, that he wasn't treated properly."