Donald Trump would not be able to raise an insanity defense in any of his criminal trials, according to attorney and former U.S. Army prosecutor Glenn Kirschner.
In a YouTube video released on Sunday, Kirschner addressed what he said is “a question raised more frequently these days, and probably with good reason”—that of whether Trump could offer an insanity defense in his criminal trials.
“It’s a fair question. We have all seen how Donald Trump is freezing up, sometimes for 20 seconds or longer, at his rallies—I mean that are obvious cognitive problems there. And we hear some of Donald Trump’s rants and rambles more recently,” he said.
Talking about a moment earlier this week when the former president got distracted by a box of Cheerios during a press conference in Bedminster, New Jersey, Kirschner said that “this is not the language or the conduct of a president, or even a functioning adult.”
The insanity defense, passed by Congress and signed into law by then president Ronald Reagan in 1984, requires a defendant to prove that “at the time of the commission of the acts constituting the offense” they were “unable to appreciate the nature and quality or the wrongfulness” of their acts “as a result of a severe mental disease or defect.”
Essentially, the defendant admits the action, but denies culpability. The defendant also has the burden of proof to demonstrate they couldn’t tell right from wrong at the time of the offense.
“The telltale sign that somebody knows right from wrong is not suffering from a severe mental disease or defect that makes it impossible for them to distinguish right from wrong, it’s that they tried to get away with their crimes,” Kirschner said.
“And Donald Trump has been trying to get away with his crimes every second, every minute of every day since he committed his many crimes,” he added.
“Is he a narcissist, does he have personality disorders? All day long. Is any of that the kind of severe mental disease or defect that would give rise to an insanity defense? Absolutely not,” Kirschner continued.
“That’s where I land as a former career prosecutor having handled insanity cases. Donald Trump will never, never have a successful insanity defense.”
Newsweek contacted Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche for comment by email on Sunday.
After Judge Aileen Cannon threw out the classified document case against Trump in July and he was found guilty in the hush-money case in New York in May, there are two criminal cases still facing the former president.
One is the January 6 riot case, which sees Trump accused of conspiring to defraud the U.S. government in relation to his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, won by President Joe Biden.
Trump has already pleaded not guilty to the charges against him, accusing the special counsel behind the case, Jack Smith, of “prosecutorial misconduct,” saying he has been unfairly targeted as part of a political “witch hunt.”
After the original start date for the trial of March 4, 2024, was postponed, no set date has been decided for the trial to officially start.
The other case is the Georgia election interference trial, which sees Trump charged with 10 criminal counts, which have been reduced from an original 13, linked to his alleged attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia together with 18 of his associates. Among the charges against him are forgery and racketeering—which carries a maximum 20-year jail sentence.
The former president has pleaded not guilty in this case as well. There is no set date for the trial to begin and it appears unlikely that this might change anytime soon.
