Prosecutors Ask Witnesses Whether Trump Acknowledged He Lost 2020 Race
“Words are incredibly powerful in white-collar cases because in a lot of them you’re not going to hear from a defendant, as they are seldom going to take the stand,” he said. “So, having those words put in front of a jury gives them more importance and makes them more consequential.”
Andrew Goldstein, the lead prosecutor in the investigation into Mr. Trump for obstruction during the Russia investigation and a partner at the law firm Cooley, said there were other benefits to having Mr. Trump’s own statements that were critical in such a potentially weighty case.
“Just as important, if the Department of Justice has this kind of evidence, it could help justify to the public why charges in this case would be necessary to bring,” Mr. Goldstein said.
Some aides and allies who interacted with Mr. Trump in the days after the election have previously disclosed that Mr. Trump indicated that he knew he lost the election. In testimony before the House select committee, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, said that in an Oval Office meeting in late November or early December 2020, Mr. Trump acknowledged that he had lost the election.
“He says words to the effect of: Yeah, we lost, we need to let that issue go to the next guy,” Mr. Milley said, adding: “Meaning President Biden.”
“And the entire gist of the conversation was — and it lasted — that meeting lasted maybe an hour or something like that — very rational,” General Milley said. “He was calm. There wasn’t anything — the subject we were talking about was a very serious subject, but everything looked very normal to me. But I do remember him saying that.”
General Milley said, though, that in subsequent meetings Mr. Trump had increasingly discussed how the election was stolen from him.
Source: The New York Times
