Trump Guilty Until Proven Innocent – Key Lessons From a DC Courtroom

When Past is Prologue

This one should make you angry enough to storm the ballot box in 2024 and throw the rascals out. It’s fresh — with a little bit of foul air — from a DC court room and Kafka ain’t got nothing on the this.

Trump Guilty Until Proven Innocent – Key Lessons From a DC Courtroom

What can Donald Trump learn from my conviction for a crime I never should have been prosecuted for?   

Lesson One: Elections can have consequences.

If Republicans controlled EITHER the House of Representatives OR the White House and Department of Justice (DOJ) in 2020, neither Donald Trump nor I would ever have been indicted.  Instead, we have an uber-partisan, dual system of injustice under Joe Biden’s banana republic rule interfering with, and thereby destroying faith in, our election system. 

Lesson Two: Judges have far more power to determine verdicts than juries.

In principle, every defendant is entitled to the broadest range of defenses.  In practice, before a case gets to a jury, a judge can eliminate any number of defenses – or in my case almost ALL.

I was on trial for failing to comply with a Congressional subpoena.  I have already made history as the first senior White House advisor in history ever to be so charged. 

Memo to Merrick Garland: Your DOJ has a more than 50-year policy that White House advisors and “alter egos” of the president like me absolutely cannot be compelled to testify before Congress.  Despite my absolute testimonial immunity, Garland’s weaponized DOJ went for my jugular.

The defenses I was stripped of by the judge ranged from unlawful bill of attainder and selective prosecution to entrapment by estoppel, public authority, and, most importantly, executive privilege.  I was also denied numerous discovery requests that would have bolstered several defenses. 

Donald Trump is unlikely to fare much better – and likely far worse.

Lesson Three: Any District of Columbia jury will be biased against Trump.

In my case, I sat through voir dire of 50 potential jurors drawn from DC voting roles where Democrat registration runs at 76% and Joe Biden got 92% of the 2020 vote.  No potential juror expressed support for Trump.  Many expressed anti-Trump sentiments.  Yet, all jurors needed do to be seated was swear their negative Trump views would not affect their verdict. 

While I respect the twelve jurors who took time out of their busy days to do their civic duty, overcoming one’s political biases is a lot to ask of human nature.  This is particularly when DOJ prosecutors play dirty pool -- as they did in my case.

Lesson Four: DOJ prosecutors came to court not in search of justice but to put me in prison.  Trump’s prosecutors will likewise cheat and lie to make sure Trump is never again president.

In my case, rather than prove me guilty of the “crime” I was actually accused of – they couldn’t even meet that burden -- prosecutors John Crabbe and Elizabeth Aloi repeatedly sought to implant the false and prejudicial notion in the jury’s mind that I was a “Trumpist insurrectionist” responsible for “fomenting” and “inciting” the January 6 violence.

In a darkly funny court moment, my attorney strenuously objected that Crabbe had cribbed the identical opening statement used in the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers cases.  Despite such objections -- and admonishments from the judge -- Crabbe and Aloi would triple down on the J6 and Trumpist red herrings as they themselves sought to foment and incite anger against me among jurors. 

Tarred as I was with the Trump and J6 brushes, I never had a chance.  This was particularly true after a marshal inexplicably took my jurors outside the court building for some “fresh air.” There, jurors bore witness to the foul sight of sign wielding J6 and anti-Trump protesters calling for my imprisonment.  Within minutes of their return to deliberations, the jury would find me guilty.  How do you spell mistrial?

Lesson Five: Add these four lessons up, and Donald Trump has ZERO chance of acquittal. 

Accordingly, the 2024 presidential election will not be about critical issues but rather a referendum on whether to allow Biden to put his political rival behind bars.  The result will almost certainly be a Trump landslide. 

There are simply far too many Americans on both sides of the political aisle increasingly angered with Biden’s election interference.  This is particularly true as inflation rages, our borders crumble, and Communist China, Imperial Russia, the Mullahs of Iran, and North Korea’s Rocket Man now rise like a blood bad moon. 

FINAL NOTE: My observations should not be construed as disrespect for the DC court.  My judge Amit Mehta always treated me with respect, and, as he stated in court, he believed I clearly believed I was not breaking the law, that my hands were tied by my oath of office, and that I was unfairly caught in the middle of a constitutional separation of powers dispute between the legislative and executive branches. 

I similarly believe my judge was unfairly bound by the quite unsettled case law and the many “open questions” he had to deal with – unsettled law and open questions an appeals court will soon have to consider in what is destined to be a landmark Supreme Court case of “first impressions.” 

That Judge Mehta and I are thus bound by history is precisely why we have Courts of Appeals.  If my tombstone reads “Peter Navarro successfully defended the constitutional separation of powers against partisan attack because he settled good law on the sanctity of executive privilege,” history will judge me to be the honorable man I have always strived to be.