Smith might have a much harder time proving his case than he and Trump’s many and most vociferous detractors realize. I have never had the slightest suspicion that the 2020 election was stolen, as I have told Trump personally. But I also don’t doubt that he sincerely believed that victory was denied him by the many irregularities in the 2020 election season.
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Again, I think Trump is wrong, and there is zero evidence of material voter fraud sufficient to flip one, much less three or four, of the states that went to Joe Biden. But I can see how Trump arrived at his mistaken suspicions. A fair-minded jury might well see it, too. When the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard is applied, I don’t see a conviction on any of the charges Smith leveled.
Consider the effect that absurd, distorted polling by the mainstream media might have had on Trump’s state of mind. To cite just one example, a pair of Post-ABC News polls that were announced a week before the election had Joe Biden winning Wisconsin by 17 points; yet he barely edged out Trump, by 0.7 percent, or fewer than 20,800 votes. Terrible polling that makes results seem a foregone conclusion has the effect of soft voter suppression, and it causes the misallocation of campaign resources. Of course 2020 polling failures, often by tacitly pro-Biden organizations, contributed to Trump’s loss.
During the campaign season, there were several unprecedented events that would cause plenty of people...
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