The ignorance defense
On ABC’s Sunday Morning, Chris Christie, former New Jersey Governor and informal Trump advisor, made the claim one more time: Donald Trump is ignorant of the laws regarding politics. Christie went on, “…he is a business man, and he does things that he would do in business.” Christie then said that those actions shouldn’t occur in politics, but Trump didn’t, and doesn’t, know.
So, in Christie’s view, the fact that Donald Trump was an unethical businessman was acceptable, and that should excuse him from being an unethical politician.
The Mueller Report
In the first volume of the Mueller Report, it was clear that the June 9thmeeting at Trump Tower between Russians and Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort met all of the criteria for a conspiracy to commit election crimes except for, in Mueller’s opinion, the “mens rea;” the state of mind {Mueller Report, Volume 1, p.189-190.} Mueller wasn’t convinced he could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump Jr. or Kushner knew that what they were doing was against the law. While he could certainly show that Manafort knew, he already had Manafort guilty on multiple more serious charges.
We all grew up with the phrase: “ignorance of the law is no excuse” (ignorantia legis neminem excusat in the original Latin.) It goes back in Western history to the Greek philosopher Aristotle, and has been a bedrock principle of Roman and English Common Law through the centuries. What Special Counsel Mueller has taught us now, is that ignorance of the law is in fact not only an excuse, but can be so compelling that it inoculates a suspect from prosecution.
Several of the “legal experts,” even on MSNBC, have spoken of the “…complicated laws governing campaign conduct and finance,” suggesting that novices like the Trumps could easily run afoul of their arcane twists and turns. However, this section of the Federal Code is pretty clear (52 US Code § 30121.) As Ellen Weintraub, Chairman of the Federal Election Commission said:
“I would not have thought that I needed to say this…Let me make something 100 percent clear to the American public and anyone running for public office: It is illegal for any person to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a U.S. election…”
ROOKIE EXCUSES
I was a low level member of the Jimmy Carter campaign back in 1976, a “field coordinator.” It didn’t get any lower, the next step was a volunteer, though at $50 a week, I wasn’t far from that. I was all of twenty years old, but I’m absolutely sure that if a Soviet agent had come to me with ANY kind of information, I would have figured out to get to the FBI. It wouldn’t have been a complex decision requiring legal consultation. If I had a question, I could have asked the Secret Service agents we worked with when the candidate came to town. They were friendly and approachable (at least when Carter was in town, when President Ford arrived, not so much) and would answer any and all questions.
The Trumps not only had access to the Secret Service, but to a myriad of high priced lawyers (besides Michael Cohen) who would have given them clear advice. Which raises the question: were the Trumps “novices” who were unaware, or did they maintain a “willful ignorance” so they didn’t “have” to know?
WILLFUL IGNORANCE
Today, besides writing these essays, I am a teacher of “Pole Vaulting Safety.” Talk about a small niche: I teach middle and high school coaches how to coach the pole vault event safely. They are required to have a “safety certificate” to work in Ohio. If there was a pole vault accident, and the coach was not certified; they and their school would be in a difficult legal situation. (Want more on Pole Vault Safety – click here.)
Not being certified is a “willful ignorance” of the rules governing coaching. Being certified exposes those coaches to safe and unsafe coaching practices. Hopefully, they go out and coach safely, and kids have fun, succeed and don’t get hurt.
If one chooses (and it is a choice) to run a national political campaign costing millions of dollars, it would be reasonable “due diligence” to have a familiarity with the laws. It’s common sense, and while it can be argued that the Trump’s lack sense, this one seems too easy. Like the “safety certificate” program, the Trumps would either have willfully chosen not to know the laws, or been so arrogant as to not care.
SIN NO MORE
The sins of the past will be settled in the Courts, Congressional Committees, and ultimately at the voting booth in 2020. But as far as the sins of the future are concerned, the President, his family and his campaign need to be on notice: the laws which seemed so beneath their concern in 2016 are still in force today. Ignorantia legis neminem excusat.
PS – It seems that the President in his interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos said something to the effect that if the FBI “cabal” investigating him had leaked news of the investigation before the 2016 election, he would have had a hard time explaining it and might not have won. That, of course, is exactly the point: if there was really a plot to keep Trump from the Presidency, they could have easily succeeded by just such a leak. The fact that they didn’t demonstrates that there was no “FBI plot against him” like the fiction he and his supporters keep trumpeting.
