Donald Trump's attorneys inadvertently just helped Special Counsel Jack Smith prove a major part of his case against the former president, argued Aaron Blake in a column for the Washington Post on Wednesday.
Blake looks at a recent legal brief in Trump's appeal for presidential immunity in his federal election conspiracy case, which he argues contains a "remarkable" detail useful to Smith's team.
"His attorneys refer to a social media post from Trump the same day of the filing — Tuesday — which links to a report from an unnamed source running down various voter-fraud claims," writes Blake. "The report, to put it lightly, is a mess."
Blake writes that the report contains "astonishing and false claims" that fly in the face of fact, specifically that no evidence exists that President Joe Biden won the 2020 election and that Trump's early swing state leads prove interference occurred.
"But even Trump allies had acknowledged before the election that the expected late arrival of ballots from populous and heavily Democratic areas, as well as mail-in ballots, would create an illusion of an early Trump lead," Blake writes. "There is nothing suspicious about how those states flipped as time went on."
That was just the tip of the iceberg of spurious claims made in this document, writes Blake.
Blake believes bringing this document to the court's attention will be a choice Trump's lawyers come to regret.
"What it demonstrates is how much this entire effort was about manufacturing smoke," Blake concludes. "And in that way, the Trump lawyers in effect just proved the prosecutors’ point."
