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President Trump is up against some of the most twisted and dirty tactics from the Deep State. Everything is hanging in the balance; these political goons are trying to silence him for life. Just look at what the the globalists are doing to Bolsonaro, Trump’s political doppelganger in Brazil.

The global elites won’t rest until they’ve silenced every populist candidate who’s fighting for the working class. Trump could potentially die in prison, so the stakes have never been higher, even though the allegations are completely baseless. That’s why his defense strategy is of utmost importance. So, President Trump has reached back into history for his defense approach, drawing on his best-selling book, “The Art of the Deal” to concoct his “Bravado Defense.” Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley says it’s a risky move that could cost him at trial, but could really help him in the court of public opinion.

Jonathan Turley:

Since the arraignment, much of the talk about the federal indictment of Donald Trump has focused on the audiotape on which the former president refers to what he said were classified plans to attack Iran. When it was first reported, I noted that the only cognizable defense would be “bravado,” an admission that Trump was exaggerating but that the document was not what he claimed.

Trump has now adopted that defense in an interview with Semafor and with ABC News. The problem is that bravado can come at a cost.

On the audiotape, Trump is apparently motioning to material on his desk and tells two interviewers: “I’ll show you an example. He said that I wanted to attack Iran. Isn’t it amazing? I have a big pile of papers, this thing just came up. Look. This was him. They presented me this. This is off the record, but they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him. We looked at some. This wasn’t done by me. All sorts of stuff, pages long, look. Let’s see here. It’s that amazing. This totally wins my case, you know. Except it is, like, highly confidential, secret. This is secret information. But look, look at this. You attack.”

When asked about the audiotape by Fox News’ Bret Baier, Trump insisted that “there was no document. That was a massive amount of papers and everything else, talking about Iran and other things.”

He has now admitted that he was engaging in “bravado,” declaring: “I would say it was bravado, if you want to know the truth, it was bravado. I was talking and just holding up papers and talking about them, but I had no documents. I didn’t have any documents.”

This whole “Bravado Defense” concept harks 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 that it’s a key component of his personality.

The admission was notable, given what Trump once wrote about in his book The Art of the Deal: “The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves. but they can get very excited by those who do. That is why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest, the greatest and the most spectacular.”

Trump’s past embrace of bravado as a signature style will help him in arguing that, while he may have been braggadocious, he was not careless with a document that did not exist.

Turley believes the “Bravado” defense will be a problem for Trump in the court, mainly because of the tapes the government has.

Notably, Merriam-Webster defines “bravado” as both “blustering, swaggering conduct” (as Trump described in his book) but also “the quality or state of being foolhardy.”

The Justice Department, in its case against the former president, is likely to focus on the second meaning. Even if the Justice Department cannot establish that the Iran attack plans were actually on Trump’s desk, it can use the audiotape against him.

The most immediate impact is that any possibility that Trump might take the stand likely just vanished. In a case about the mishandling of classified material, “bravado” is hardly a positive defense. It is perfectly believable that there was no classified document being waived around — but it also shows a “foolhardy” attitude that could further taint the defense over the pictures of boxes stored in a bathroom and ballroom. Waiving around documents while bragging that you kept classified material undermines claims that you took such documents seriously.

The greatest impact, however, is that it demolishes Trump’s defense that he declassified all of the documents. At the end of the audiotape, Trump states: “When I was president, I could have declassified it, now I can’t.”

That also could be bravado — but it is clearly baffling for a president who insisted that he could declassify material with a thought.

However, Turley says that while Trump’s tactic is risky, it may be his best play.

 The bravado defense is likely to play better with the public than a court. According to one recent poll, a majority of the public views the indictment as politically motivated or even as election interference. Some Republican presidential candidates have stated already that they will (or would consider) pardons for Trump if they are elected in 2024. As I have previously argued, Trump could give himself a self-pardon, too — including a prospective pardon before any conviction. Thus, 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 cannot afford to lose one felony count, Smith cannot afford to lose one juror. With the trial’s transfer to Fort Pierce, Fla., Trump will have a far better jury pool than he would face in New York or, potentially, Atlanta. If the jury hangs, Smith would have to retry the case — a very uncertain prospect with a public losing its patience for the prosecution.

The deck is stacked against President Trump, and any conservative who finds themselves in the crosshairs of our weaponized judicial 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 undeniably the wisest tactic he can use, as the court of public opinion gains more relevance as our judicial system becomes more of a joke.

Read Turley’s full piece…

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