Donald Trump announced in an interview aired this week that he is willing to run for president even if convicted of a crime. That would be better, because his candidacy does not diminish his enormous legal exposure.

Despite the risks serious enough to alarm even the most reckless litigant, Trump has taken on an imperious derision. The goal, if you can attribute a goal to someone as reactive as the former president, appears to be to turn public and political opinion against his opponents.

But even if Trump maintains his ability to spark rallies and appeal to Slavic allies in Congress, neither public opinion nor so-called legislative scrutiny can protect him from the legal dangers imposed on him. The defenses he offers in public are unlikely to fly in the courts, which is where he will need them. Indeed, the rules and regulations of the courtroom may prevent him from ever making much of his case in a courtroom.

Start with Trump’s transparently racist attacks on Manhattan Dist. attentive Alvin Bragg and the accusation, repeated by Ohio Representative Jim Jordan and associates, that the ex-President had not been indicted for a crime, but for political reasons. Since it is clear that the Manhattan district attorney’s office regularly files similar charges against others, Trump’s team cannot begin to make the required showing for such arguments in court.

Trump’s purported factual defense to the Braggs case, bombastically offered at campaign rallies, is that he never had sex with Stormy Daniels and that the payout to her was to protect his family from a revelation of her accusations, not, as prosecutors are expected to argue. , to illegally bolster his 2016 campaign. These arguments face even greater obstacles from ever being heard in court.

Trials are conducted under rules of evidence designed to ensure that testimony is reliable and relevant to the opposite of Trump’s typical approach to the stump. How can he convince a jury of reasonable doubt about the charges under those rules? The most obvious and perhaps the only way would be to take the stand to testify in his own defense.

But the first axiom of any trial involving Trump is that he cannot testify. There isn’t a respectable lawyer in the country who would put him on the stand.

Under the rules of evidence, taking the stand would compromise Trump’s credibility, allowing the prosecution to confront him about lies he has told. The Washington Post has documented more than 30,000 of them in his presidency alone, many of them blatant and unmistakable.

The cross-examination procedures would leave no room for Trump to dodge questions or tribunals. A skilled lawyer could bring him into line and force him to answer yes or no, admit the truth, or commit perjury in his case. The result would be a humiliating new low for the defendant.

Even before Bragg’s case against Trump goes ahead, he faces the same conundrum in the E. Jean Carroll case, which begins next week (although Trump moved Tuesday to postpone it because of the publicity surrounding the Bragg charge). To provide the defense he never attacked

Carroll

who he said wasn’t my type, he should take the stand.

It will not happen. He can’t afford to appear in a setting where he has to tell the truth.

The rules also barred Trump from letting other people testify that he told them, for example, that Daniels’ payout was to protect Melania’s feelings. Under the rules of evidence, such testimony would be inadmissible as hearsay, considered unreliable because the person giving the statement would not make himself available for cross-examination. (Trump could try a number of strategies to get into hearsay statements, but they would be of little help because the rules would allow the prosecution to cast doubt on his credibility as if he had taken the stand.)

However, the same rules specifically allow such statements from prosecution witnesses. So while Trump cannot make a selfish statement through a third party, Bragg evidence can provide evidence for virtually any statement the former president has made.

For example, a likely prosecution witness, David Pecker, the former CEO of parent company National Enquirers, could testify that Trump told him he wanted to catch and kill potentially damaging stories for political reasons. Trump’s lawyers could try to question Pecker’s credibility, but they couldn’t say put Jim Jordan on the stand to testify that Trump told him he was doing it for Melania. Only Trump could testify to that. (See Axiom 1.)

Trump’s instinctive slash-and-burn approach has dragged him through a lifetime of consistent dodging. He’s always been able to make his own rules, but he won’t be able to do that in the consequence arena he’s entering. The justice system works by its own rules, which are very unfavorable to him.

Harry Litman is the host of the

Talking Feds podcast

.

@harrylitman