Prefacing with “I am not a lawyer,” I’m only related to a two lawyers, two police officers, and have too many extended family friends who are both, I worked a short time in a court, and now watch/listen to too many lawyers talking on podcasts… so I’m likely the worst of the worst kind of armchair lawyer wannabe.
Hearsay is generally inadmissible as evidence used against the accused having allegedly committed a crime, because it’s second-hand information and the person effectively making the evidentiary statement isn’t the one currently testifying under oath.
I can’t simply testify that you told me that you watched Trump commit a crime, when you aren’t there to provide witness testimony.
But exceptions do apply, and in this case it would be when it comes to establishing a general intent or motive, a mental/emotional state of the accused.
I can testify that you told me Trump was angry about the election. I think there could be arguments that this testimony should be inadmissible if there is no chance for you to testify to the same, unless you were available for rebuttal or possibly involved in the crime itself, where you would feasibly be protected by the 5th amendment.
So it wouldn’t be slam dunk “Scavino told me that Trump said we are going to illegally overthrow the election” is totally inadmissible as evidence of the crime. But the testimony from Ellis of what Scavino told her, that “we” don’t care what the election outcome is, that “we” aren’t leaving, at the very least implies that “we” have an intention to defy the outcome if it isn’t in our favor. Meaning the “we” certainly aren’t staying in power purely because “we” we think we won, and have good faith reasons to believe “we” should remain.
The telegraphed defense so far for Trump has been that he believes he actually won, and this testimony is a direct rebuke of that idea. This will naturally require more corroborating testimony presented to a jury to reach “beyond a reasonable doubt” on his intent to ignore the election and stay in power, but it proves such testimony already exists.
You do that by having enough people that were nearby, or better, involved in the overall conspiracy testifying that they were operating with the knowledge that what they were doing was illegal.
“Beyond a reasonable doubt” is not “beyond the shadow of any doubt.”
If you have three or four insiders saying that Trump wanted to do X (which was an illegal act), and corroborating testimony that he was told by these lawyers, like Ellis, that the law doesn’t work that way, that this is illegal, it’s not reasonable that Trump can righteously still believe he was not committing a crime. By that point it’s “ignorance of the law” at best, which is not a defense.
Testimonies will be catered to pointing this out, and there will be plenty of arguments about the intent of text messages and emails and conversations surrounding Trump, they will ultimately establish everyone was aware that this illegal obstruction is being done knowingly and at Trump’s direction. Once you’re there, it requires an absolutely unreasonable juror to conclude he had any reason to believe be was in the right.