Jake Tapper Invokes George Costanza to Question Trump Trial Strategy: Does ‘It’s Not a Lie If You Believe It’ Work as a Defense?

President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial strategy will apparently attempt to defend his repeated baseless claims of a stolen election — something he repeated in his first video during the Capitol riots — and the filing Tuesday tries to say “insufficient evidence exists upon which a reasonable jurist could conclude that the 45th President’s statements were accurate or not.”

And with the trial in the “Unites States Senate” just days away, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked about whether the Trump team can get away with the George Costanza defense.

Jim Acosta said Tuesday that Trump clearly won the battle on whether to include his false election claims in his impeachment defense, but as Tapper noted minutes later, there is the question of whether Trump’s state of mind in making those false claims would potentially help that defense.

“Obviously, this big lie about the election having been stolen is utter crap and has been found as such by dozens of courts, election boards, everybody who is credible,” Tapper pointed out. “But there is this issue in the law of mens rea, the defendant’s state of mind. And as George Costanza once said, ‘It’s not a lie if you believe it.’ Does it matter if Donald Trump believed it?”

Former U.S. attorney Preet Bharara responded, “No, I don’t think so. Because he wasn’t just expressing his view of what the election results were, whether they were proper or not… Look at the context of all of this.”

He noted how Trump went beyond mere speech expressing his “belief,” he engaged in questionable (to put it mildly) actions including that now-infamous call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

“Trump wasn’t just whining about the election. He was trying to get people to do things to overturn the election, up to and including the rally on January 6th,” Bharara said.

You can watch above, via CNN.

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