Government

Trump Lawyers Botch Hearsay Rule... AGAIN!

Rather than filing an appeal, perhaps this should have been a teachable moment.

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Who could have predicted that a legal team assembled by a guy whose go-to defense is repeating “lots of people are saying” would traffic in hearsay?

Remember when the Trump campaign filed a Gordian knot of hearsay within hearsay that a Michigan judge had to untangle? It was the stuff bad law school issue spotters were made of, except it was happening for real and in a lawsuit purported to hold the fate of the presidential election in the balance.

Well, the Trump campaign takes issue with these judges questioning their grasp of hearsay and have asked higher courts to recognize that their affidavits are perfectly admissible and not hearsay at all.

Unless, of course, you define hearsay as “an out-of-court statement offered to prove the truth of whatever it asserts.” In which case, they’re totally hearsay.

For those who aren’t attorneys or anyone who jettisoned this subject the second they passed the bar and took up M&A so they never had to think about Evidence again, this brief is legal gobbledygook. If this person witnessed some wrongdoing, then so be it, but it’s not evidence to say that she heard someone else say that wrongdoing occurred. And it doesn’t help the matter to say, “But look, the unidentified third person wrote down that they heard about wrongdoing.”

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Yes, there are instances where someone can testify to the specific things they heard or saw outside of court, but not when they’re doing so “for the truth of the matter.” For example, one could assert that, “I heard so and so say that Trump’s lawyers molest collies” for the purpose of a defamation claim, but one can’t submit that statement as proof that Trump’s lawyers, in fact, “molest collies.”

In any event, it’s pretty textbook that someone claiming that they heard poll workers say that other poll workers were saying that they were committing crimes is not the sort of thing that avoids hearsay.

But Trump’s team cites caselaw! That must be helpful for their cause right?

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Or at least misguided about how to interpret this case.

Let’s credit Alyssa Leader for putting this succinctly:

Things seem to have gone awry over at Trump’s Elite Strike Force Team headquarters. If you’ve heard any rumors about it, feel free to slap them in an affidavit.

The brief is available on the next page. Shout out to the folks at Law & Crime who uploaded it.

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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