Trump’s 'trumped-up claims about opinions won’t save him' from justice: columnists

Former President Donald Trump's "my opinion" defense of his unsubstantiated claims that he won the 2020 election is a ploy to muddy the public's recollection of what happened after the American people declined to hire him for a second term, The Bulwark's Austin Sarat and Dennis Aftergut wrote on Monday.

"I believe I won that election by many, many votes, many, many hundreds of thousands of votes," Trump proclaimed on January 2nd, 2023. "That's my opinion, and it's a strong opinion. And I think it's borne out by the facts, and we'll see that."

Sarat and Aftergut said, "Facts can be verified; opinions, in contrast, are neither true nor false. They are just expressions of feelings or beliefs. They tell us about a person's state of mind."

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The columnists warned that Trump's attempts to rewrite history are executed with "such mistrust metastasized so broadly in the electorate" that "the risk to the stability of the republic cannot be overstated."

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Sarat and Aftergut argued that "in such conditions, there is a very real possibility of violence. We've seen it before, and not just on January 6th. Last Thursday, in Provo, Utah, FBI agents were acting on court-authorized arrest and search warrants when Craig D. Robertson pointed a gun at them and did not respond to their commands. They were forced to shoot him. He died at the scene."

Sarat and Aftergut stressed, "Alternative facts or suddenly trumped-up claims about opinions won't save" the ex-commander-in-chief from the four-federal-felony-count-indictment that United States Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith filed against him last month for the alleged January 6th, 2021 conspiracy to overthrow the government.

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"As more individuals with fringe political views or suffering from mental disturbances hear Trump's inflammatory rhetoric, more violence is almost sure to occur—whether or not he inserts 'I think' before his fraudulent election claims," Sarat and Aftergut continued.

They added that "in fact, Trump's change of tune will only have him looking even more like the untrustworthy person he is—the kind that juries do not hesitate to convict."

Sarat's and Aftergut's analysis is available at this link (subscription required).