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This has to be said, and brought up, and acted upon.  We have gone through the year 2020 befuddled, helpless, with daily shocks by the news. One man in a position of power created absolute chaos on a daily basis, played down the risk, ridiculed safety measures, muzzled his health experts, offered solutions that were assinine (yes, shining UV into rectum, along with drinking bleach were part of it).  As the result of his actions and inactions, hundreds of thousands died who could have been saved. 

Glen Kirschner, former federal prosecutor, in a conversation with Brian Tyler Cohen on his No Lie show, transcript from 12/30/2022:

“Brian, I have maintained all along, I have talked about this a number of times that the way the Trump administration handled the pandemic really does give them criminal liability. Why do I say that? For 22 of my 30 years as a prosecutor I was handling murder cases in Washington DC, I was trying them, I was supervising them, I was responsible for overseeing all murder cases in the courts of DC while I was a federal prosecutor. And you know, if you look at the law of homicide, let’s just take the law of DC as an example, each jurisdiction in each state and the District of Columbia has its own laws on the books and it defines homicides and the different levels of homicides in slightly different ways, and I think we all are kind of familiar with first degree premeditated murder, second degree murder, voluntary manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter, some jurisdictions have what we call negligent homicides. I am going to use the laws of DC for this discussion about the liability of the Trump administration. So, there’s a relatively low level of homicide called involuntary manslaughter. And there are three elements, that is, if somebody does three things, these three elements, then they are criminally responsible for involuntary manslaughter for the death of another.

Let’s talk about these three elements and then let’s talk about why Trump and Kushner and I want to talk for a minute about Mike Pence who was the head of the Coronavirus task force while Trump and Kushner were creating circumstances that allowed for avoidable COVID deaths. So, I think Pence has responsibility too. Let’s talk about those three elements.

The first element is somebody acted in a grossly negligent manner. What does that mean? They did something that was just kind of reckless, it was just really negligent and there are actually two ways that you can fulfill this element. I hate to make this the crim law 101 class but bear with me for a minute. Somebody either acts in a grossly negligent way or they have a duty to act like they’re the president of the United States and they have a duty to faithfully execute the laws of the country, they have a duty to support and defend the Constitution and they have a duty to protect the American people, they have a duty to act and they fail to act and that failure is grossly negligent. I maintain Donald Trump actually satisfies element number one in both ways because he acted in a grossly negligent way and he had a duty to act and he failed to act in a grossly negligent way. Any way that’s a mouthful, but that’s number one.

Element number two is that the person’s negligence put people in harm’s way. More precisely, the person’s gross negligence was reasonably likely to result in death or serious bodily injury to another.

And then the third element is that the person’s negligence or their failure to act caused the death of another. And that’s where a lot of people back up and say, ‘You can’t really prove that Donald Trump caused the death of another, and that sounds good on the surface, but when you scratch below the surface and you look at how the law defines causation, causation simply means that your grossly negligent conduct or your failure to was a substantial factor in bringing about the death of another, not that you killed them, not that you shot them or stabbed them or strangled them, but that your conduct was a substantial factor in bringing about the death.

Now, let’s apply these elements to the known conduct of Donald Trump, and by extension Kushner, and also Mike Pence. First of all, did Donald Trump act in a grossly negligent way, did he put people in harm’s way? Well, let’s see, he lied to the American people about the dangers of the pandemic right? He has now admitted to Bob Woodward in private interviews that ‘I always wanted to downplay (note from Dem — sic- should be play it down) . He didn’t want to tell people the full truth. He didn’t want to give them the people the tools to protect themselves. He said, ‘It’s going to go away like a miracle. The warm weather will kill it. You have nothing to worry about.’ “ And here’s one of the things that he did that I think best exemplifies how it is that he was grossly negligent.

Remember there was a White House press conference and a terrific reporter, Jeff Mason, was asking Donald Trump a question and he was wearing a mask. Why? He wanted to protect himself, the CDC was recommending wearing masks to protect yourself and others, you know, to deter transmission of this deadly virus. And what did the president say to Jeff Mason? ‘I can’t hear you. Take off your mask. ‘ Jeff Mason said, ‘No, Mr. President. I am protecting myself and others.’ He said, ‘Oh, ohm I see I see. You want to be politically correct.’ Think about it Brian, what message did his base take away from that? That you are worthy of being mocked by the president of the United States if you wear a mask to protect yourself and others. And here’s the thing, you know, Americans should be able to rely on what the American president is saying and doing and make their life decisions accordingly. So, you know that he was grossly negligent. Did his gross negligence result in, was it reasonably likely to put people in harm’s way? It absolutely was. He was contradicting the very guidance that we all knew would protect the lives of Americans, would slow or prevent the transmission of this deadly pandemic. The first two elements, check and check.

Let’s go to the third element, did Donald Trump’s negligence cause the death of others? I, we, have a concrete example that I like to use to illustrate why the answer to that question is yes, Donald Trump committed the crime of involuntary manslaughter because he checks all three boxes. So, when I was chief of homicide in DC, we had a case where a robber was chasing a victim down the street, the victim was trying to evade the robber, and he ran between two parked cars, he darted out into the street, he was struck by a vehicle, and he was killed. Now, did the robber kill him? Did the robber cause his death? Well, not literally, the driver of the vehicle caused his death. But this highlights how the law looks at causation. Causation is a substantial factor in bringing about the death and the robber chasing the victim into traffic was a substantial factor in bringing about his death.

I know that I have gone through a whole crim law 101 class on the law of involuntary manslaughter. Thank you for bearing with me. But this is why I absolutely believe prosecutor that Donald Trump is criminally responsible for avoidable COVID deaths.“