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President Trump is up against some of the Deep State’s most twisted and dirty tactics. Everything hangs in the balance; these political thugs are trying to silence him for life. Just look at what the globalists are doing to Bolsonaro, Trump’s political double in Brazil.
JUST IN – Brazil’s electoral court has voted to ban Jair Bolsonaro from seeking public office until 2030.
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) June 30, 2023
The global elites will not rest until they have silenced every populist candidate fighting for the working class. Trump could potentially die in prison, so the stakes have never been higher, even though the accusations are completely unfounded. That’s why your defense strategy is of utmost importance. Therefore, President Trump has made history again for his defense approach, drawing on his best-selling book, “The Art of the Deal” to invent his “Bravado Defense.” Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley says it’s a risky move that could cost him in court, but could actually help him in the court of public opinion.
Since the indictment, much of the conversation surrounding Donald Trump’s federal indictment has focused on the audio tape in which the former president refers to what he said were classified plans to attack Iran. When it was first reported, I pointed out that the only cognizable defense would be “bravado,” an admission that Trump was exaggerating but that the document was not what it claimed.
Trump has now adopted this defense in an interview with Semafor and ABC News. The problem is that bravado can come at a cost.
On the audio tape, Trump appears to gesture to material on his desk and tell two interviewers, “I’ll show you an example. He said he wanted to attack Iran. Isn’t that amazing? I have a big stack of papers, this just came out. Look. This was him. I was introduced to this. This is off the record, but I was introduced to it. This was him. This was the Department of Defense and him. We looked at some of them. This I didn’t. All kinds of things, long pages, look. Let’s see here. It’s so amazing. That totally wins my case, you know. Except it’s, like, highly confidential, secret. This is information secret. But look, look at this. You attack.”
When asked about the audio tape by Bret Baier of Fox News, Trump insisted that “there were no documents. It was a lot of papers and everything else, talking about Iran and stuff.”
He has now admitted he was being ‘brave’, declaring: “I would say it was a bravado, if you want to know the truth, it was a bravado. He was talking and just holding up papers and talking about them, but he had no documents. He had no documents.”
This whole concept of “Bravado Defense” goes back to “The Art of The Deal” where Trump detailed his use of bravado as a promotional tool for everything. Anyone who watches Trump knows it’s a key component of his personality.
The admission was remarkable, considering what Trump once wrote in his book The Art of the Deal: “The ultimate key to the way I promote is bravado. I play on people’s fantasies. It’s possible that people don’t always think big. But those who do can get really excited. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest, the grandest, the most spectacular.” .
Trump’s past embrace of bravado as a signature style will help him make the case that while he may have been boastful, he didn’t care about a document that didn’t exist.
Turley believes the “Bravado” defense will be a problem for Trump in court, mainly because of the tapes the government has.
In particular, Merriam-Webster defines “boldness” as both “boasting and swaggering behavior” (as Trump described in his book), as well as “the quality or state of being reckless.”
The Justice Department, in its case against the former president, is likely to focus on the latter. Even if the Justice Department can’t establish that plans to attack Iran were actually on Trump’s desk, it can use the audio tape against him.
The most immediate impact is that any chance of Trump taking the stand probably just disappeared. In a case about the mishandling of classified material, “bravado” is not an affirmative defense. It’s perfectly believable that no classified documents were given up, but it also shows a “reckless” attitude that could further taint the defense over footage of boxes stored in a bathroom and ballroom. Relinquishing the documents while boasting that you kept classified material undermines the claims you took seriously.
The biggest impact, however, is that it demolishes Trump’s defense that he declassified all the documents. At the end of the audiotape, Trump states, “When I was president, I could have declassified it, now I can’t.”
That might also be bravado, but it’s clearly disconcerting for a president who insisted he could declassify material with a thought.
However, Turley says that while Trump’s tactic is risky, it may be his best move yet.
The bravado defense is likely to play better with the public than with a court. According to a recent poll, a majority of the public views the impeachment as politically motivated or even election interference. Some Republican presidential candidates have already stated that they will have (or would consider) pardons for Trump if elected in 2024. As I’ve argued above, Trump could also self-pardon, including a possible pardon before any conviction. So if Trump can delay the trial until after the election, Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith may never see a jury in the case.
Trump also knows that while he can’t afford to lose a felony count, Smith can’t afford to lose a juror. By moving the trial to Fort Pierce, Florida, Trump will have a much better jury than he would face in New York or, potentially, Atlanta. If the jury is hung, Smith would have to retry the case, a highly uncertain prospect with a public growing impatient with the prosecution.
The deck is stacked against President Trump and any conservative who finds himself in the crosshairs of our armed justice system. Take Douglass Mackey, for example, who was recently convicted of “conspiracy” for sharing an anti-Hillary meme and now faces up to 10 years in prison. Trump’s “Bravado Defense” is arguably the wisest tactic he can employ, as the court of public opinion gains more relevance as our judicial system becomes more of a joke.
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