Donald Trump's admission during a "Meet the Press" interview that he ignored his lawyer's admonishments that he didn't win the 2020 election as he tried to stay in office is a major blow to his legal defense in a trial to be heard by Judge Tanya Chutkan.
According to former Fox News legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano that was an "ouch" moment that will come back to haunt the former president.
In a column published in the Orange County Register, the judge who has been friends with Trump for over 40 years -- and also provided advice during his presidency -- admitted he was surprised that the former president continues to make the lives of his lawyers miserable.
As he noted in his column, a key defense that Trump was reportedly planning to use over his involvement in the Jan 6 insurrection was that his lawyers were in agreement that he had won the election.
"Last week on 'Meet the Press,' Trump revealed that his legal team in the White House told him that he lost the election and there was insufficient evidence to challenge or overturn it. Then he said that he opted to ignore their advice 'because I didn’t respect them.' 'It was my decision,' to do what I did, not theirs. Ouch," he wrote.
According to the retired judge, that defense was "problematic" to begin with based on legal precedent, but after Trump's admission to "Meet the Press" host Kristen Welker it's now completely off the table.
After he wrote, "In order to invoke this defense, Trump will need to call to the witness stand the lawyers whom he told [Attorney John] Lauro gave him legal advice and guided what he did in the days and hours leading up to Jan. 6. He’d then need to have those lawyers explain to the jury that he made full disclosure to them of what he planned to do and received and accepted their advice telling him that the specific course of conduct in which he planned to engage was lawful," he added, "But he just told a national television audience that his lawyers were 'RINOs' (Republicans in name only) and he didn’t respect them. He didn’t say this about Lauro, rather about unnamed lawyers advising him in the White House during the final month of his presidency."
Now, Napolitano maintained, Trump will have a hard time getting them to "testify in his favor."
According to the former judge, that has been a recurring them as Trump's indictments keep piling up, by which he meant his inability to watch what he says.
"Why does Donald Trump say things that are so harmful to his legal interests? Why does he undercut his own defense in criminal cases that expose him to the potential loss of liberty for the remainder of his life? Does he know that public opinion of him as a candidate or even as president cannot save him in a courtroom?" he asked before concluding,"These are questions juries may soon be answering."
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