Just before the jury began deliberating Trump’s fate, the former president slammed his own legal defense, seemingly disapproving of the strategy they had chosen. In frantic, back-to-back posts on Truth Social Wednesday morning, Trump suggested that he had wanted an advice of counsel defense, a strategy that negates the element of criminal fraud when the advice stems from “reasonable reliance” on the advice of a person’s legal counsel.
His attorneys had indicated in March that they had no intention of employing that strategy. Instead, they wanted to include evidence that centered around the lawyers in Trump’s decision to dole out hush-money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels—a strategy that Merchan described as a “presence of counsel” defense and that he ultimately deemed would be too confusing for the jury to navigate.
The outcome will have historic ramifications not just for Trump but for the entire country. If Trump does end up being sentenced to prison, it remains to be seen how the presumptive GOP presidential nominee will attempt to continue his bid for reelection from a jailhouse—a possibility that many of his followers are falsely claiming the Secret Service has already explored.
