Emotional Lindsey Graham Begs Fox Viewers to Give Money to Trump

An upset Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) gave an impassioned plea to Fox News viewers Thursday that indicted former President Donald Trump needs their money, and he needs it right now.

Speaking to Sean Hannity on a night where commentary on Fox News has verged on the apocalyptic as a result of the indictment by a Manhattan grand jury, Graham, historically one of Trump’s most talkative defenders in the Senate, once more gave a performance that is sure to keep him in Trump’s good graces.

Declaring that the motivating factor in the indictment is “hatred,” Graham argued that Democrats “fear Trump at the ballot box.”

“They’re trying to drain him dry. He’s spent more money on lawyers than most people spent on campaigns,” said Graham. In addition to being indicted in New York, Trump is facing a criminal investigation in Georgia over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and a criminal investigation by the Justice Department over his alleged mishandling of classified documents since leaving office. Also, Trump’s alleged rape of journalist E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s is the subject of a trial set to begin in April.

Graham, looking bleary-eyed, would end up directing viewers to the presidential candidate’s website three times in the next two minutes.

“Go tonight. Give the president some money to fight this bullshit!” he begged.

“To those who are listening tonight: If you believe Trump is being treated poorly and wrongly, stand up and help the man,” Graham added later, before recommending that their prayers would be welcomed as well.

“Thank you,” an appreciative Hannity said while his studio audience applauded.

At one point during the interview, a heckler in the audience could be heard screaming: “This is a wonderful day. You lie by omission and you lie.” The studio sound was cut before the woman could continue.

But in the weeks before Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecutors took the decisive step to criminally charge the former president, Trump’s defense lawyers cemented a defense that rested mainly on two points, according to a source familiar with their internal discussions.

First, it’s his lawyer’s fault. And second, Trump would have done it anyway.

The first affirmative defense exploits Cohen’s weaknesses as a truthful witness. According to the source, Trump’s team is prepared to argue that the real estate mogul was merely relying on his lawyer’s advice. Trump himself has been shopping around that theory since at least 2018, when he was still at the White House.

“I never directed Michael Cohen to break the law. He was a lawyer and he is supposed to know the law. It is called ‘advice of counsel,’ and a lawyer has great liability if a mistake is made. That is why they get paid,” he tweeted in December 2018.

At first blush, the “advice of counsel” defense makes sense, because the justice system gives great deference to lawyers and the advice they give. But it’s rarely invoked, because doing so allows investigators to pierce what are normally private attorney-client communications, according to the American Bar Association. And the defense doesn’t hold up if both the lawyer and client know what they’re doing is illegal, something known as the crime-fraud exception.

A similar “advice of counsel” defense failed to save Trump’s former White House adviser, Steve Bannon, from being convicted at trial last year for ignoring a congressional subpoena. And the Trump train has rammed head-on into the crime-fraud exception before. Last year, a California federal judge decided that Trump “more likely than not” committed a felony alongside lawyer John Eastman when they attempted to impede Congress on Jan. 6, 2021. And earlier this month, another federal judge invoked the same exception when she forced Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran to comply with a grand jury subpoena involving the Mar-a-Lago document dispute.