Donald Trump and his allies are reportedly trying to use “public fatigue” to evade criminal charges over their role in the January 6 insurrection, but such a strategy is bound to fail, according to former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance.
Vance’s assertion came during an interview on MSNBC as she addressed the recent revelation that the former president’s eldest son Donald Trump Jr. sent text messages two days after Election Day to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows laying out strategies for overturning the election results as votes were still being counted.
“The question of whether to indict has to be an evidence-specific case and there are a lot of moving pieces,” the former federal prosecutor said. “I have sympathy for what DOJ prosecutors are looking at. There are issues as varied as a First Amendment defense, for instance, whether or not the speech that was used on the Ellipse is protected by the Constitution, and whether that could prevent a prosecution. That’s just one of the many things prosecutors have to parse.”
Vance said that while many Americans would prefer to move on from the insurrection, that shouldn’t matter to prosecutors despite Republicans’ efforts to minimize the gravity of the January 6 incident.
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“There’s a lot fatigue in the court of public opinion, but that’s not how prosecutions work,” Vance said. “If DOJ decides that the law and the evidence merits prosecution, then a jury will be assembled in the United States District Court in the District of Columbia. That jury will hear evidence, not this entire enormous mess that really, I think, has created fatigue in the public, but they will hear very specific evidence on each of the elements of crimes that are charged, and they will make a decision about whether anyone charged with those crimes is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.”
She added: “Something we’ve seen over and over in these cases, I remember the prosecution of Paul Manafort is that citizens serving as jurors can set aside their preconceptions and biases and hear the evidence and reach the ruling. It is a very different enterprise from the court of public opinion.”
Watch the segment below:
