Ty Cobb, right, worked for Donald Trump’s White House for several months in 2017 and 2018 Ty Cobb held a high-profile role in the White House defending accusations of election interference from Russia. Here, he tells i why Trump is dangerous but has a"good chance" of winning his appealRob is Special Projects Editor at i. He won the Legal Reporting Award in 2019 and was shortlisted for the Washington Post's Laurence Stern Fellowship and Amnesty's Gaby Rado Prize in 2015.
The issue, he explains, is that he’s not sure what Trump did actually amounted to a crime. He believes that legislation was twisted in a unique and ultimately unfair way to prosecute the former president, in a way that no other person would have faced. Moreover, Mr Cobb points out that details of this “second crime” were not included in the wording of Trump’s indictment, preventing his legal team from preparing properly, and that the specific allegation was only explained at the very end of the trial, making it hard for his defend to argue against it.
Some legal experts remain confident that Trump’s arguments will be dismissed. Roger Stavis, a former New York City prosecutor who is now an appeals lawyer, thinks the Republican presidential nominee’s chances “are not good”. Pointing out that the jury found against him unanimously on all 34 charges, under an experienced judge, he concludes that Trump “faces long odds”.”.
“I’ve never voted for him, I’m not going to vote for him,” Mr Cobb asserts. But he is proud that he “took a multimillion-dollar pay cut to serve my country… I would do it again tomorrow.” He also sees the New York trial as the weakest of the four prosecutions that Trump could have faced before the election. Delays to the other three mean there is now “100 per cent no chance” that any of them will take place before November, he laments.In his view “there was clearly criminal conduct in both those situations, I think it’s sad that neither of those cases have gone to trial.