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Whatever you think about the Trump legal drama, it represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to learn some of the more obscure principles of criminal law. And one of those principles is 鈥渨illful blindness.鈥�

鈥淲hat the law says is that you can’t get around criminal liability by purposefully avoiding knowledge of the criminality of the act,鈥� former state Attorney General said.

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According to our 成人X站 Newsradio legal consultant McKenna, the Supreme Court established the theory of willful blindness so that white-collar criminals can鈥檛 just deliberately hire corrupt advisors and then claim, 鈥淗ey, they told me it was legal.鈥�

“The value of the willful blindness theory is that you don’t have to be convinced that the person knew he was lying. You have this other option, which is to conclude that he just avoided knowledge and facts that would have contradicted what he did,” McKenna said.

“In other words, if you just avoid looking at all the evidence that the election was not stolen, if you avoid looking at evidence that the people you’re organizing on January 6, they’re going to riot at the Capitol or, you know, you avoid knowing the facts around the Constitution and the Vice President’s role than potentially willful blindness could overcome your claim that you really believed what you said he believed,” he continued.

But you can see why Trump would use this approach, right?

Because everybody does it. Willful blindness is an epidemic. Millions of us are willfully blind to any facts that don鈥檛 fit our worldview. We are willfully blind to news channels that don鈥檛 reinforce what we already believe; some people even want to remove certain books to impose willful blindness on others.

So why shouldn鈥檛 Trump be free to do the same thing?

“Because he swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States,” McKenna said. “And with that oath comes a responsibility to know what the Constitution says and what the laws of the United States are.”

Ah, that鈥檚 the catch. It turns out that when you swear an oath, especially the oath required of all those who assume public office, it means something.

鈥淗is role as president and defender of the Constitution and the laws of our country do put him in a different role than a typical citizen would be,” McKenna said.

So yes, Trump鈥檚 supporters are right. He is being treated differently. To quote the great Ray Stevens, 鈥淭here are none so blind as he who will not see.鈥�

And if you try that in court, in a jail cell you could be.

Listen to Seattle鈥檚 Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O鈥橞rien weekday mornings from 5 鈥� 9 a.m. on 成人X站 Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the聽podcast here.