NY Post Joins the Trump Legal Team

Today's NY Post has a piece called "Trump prosecutor Jack Smith would rip up Americans’ right to free speech", by Betsy McCaughey (whom we Olds remember as the person who killed Clintoncare), and even by NY Post standards it's notable for its sheer shameless dumbassery:

Day by day, the Biden administration is robbing your right to speak freely.

This time, Team Biden wants to gag defendants from criticizing government prosecutors.

That’s how courts are run in countries like Pakistan, Russia and North Korea....

Imagine being prosecuted and being unable to speak out, proclaim your innocence and show why the case against you is unfair....

Whether in court or in the court of public opinion, both sides have to be heard to get at the truth.

That’s the American way.

Heavens to Betsy! What atrocity inspires such doom-mongering? A proposed protective order.

Special counsel Jack Smith asked the court Friday for an order to gag Donald Trump from discussing the evidence the government plans to use against him or even criticizing the government’s lawyers.

I'll just note that in the course of my work as a paralegal I've signed maybe half a dozen protective orders. That's all civil litigation, not criminal, but PBS notes that "Such protective orders are common in criminal cases" and WaPo calls it "a standard part of the legal process", so it doesn't seem that different.

Oh, and by the way? That part about it prohibiting Trump from "criticizing the government's lawyers"? You'll be shocked to hear that she made that up.

This afternoon Trump's lawyers filed their response, and...well, tell me if any of this rings a bell:

There are all kinds of possible reasons for this, from concerted coordination between the lawyers and the right-wing press, to Lauro giving McCaughey a preview of their strategy, to Trump reading McCaughey's column and telling his lawyers "make it more like this!" But for whatever reason, they are certainly on the same page.

I think the key here is McCaughey's reference to "the court of public opinion". We've all watched Trump's weirdly self-sabotaging pronouncements; Yastreblyansky discussed the possibility that Trump is trying to lose. My speculation is that the "court of public opinion" is the only court Trump recognizes, and the real court--the one that could put him in prison for the rest of his worthless life--isn't even a consideration for him.

And the grim part is that, as dumb as that is, it might not be the wrong play. Obviously if he gets elected this all goes away, but there are other scenarios where his assault on public opinion could pay off--if it taints the jury pool, for example, or if the threat of violence becomes so dire that there's pressure on the President to pardon him.

I expect we're in for a whole lot more of this.