In my earlier post debunking Trump officials’ suggestions that the commercially available Signal encryption app is permissible for classified communications, I analogized Signal to the public portion of a congressional intelligence committee hearing. I also said I’d post separately about another bit of administration legerdemain: the claim that patently classified communications were not classified. That brings to mind another analogy — a favorite tactic of defense lawyers in criminal trials.
It involves a doctrine of evidence law: Episodes of innocent conduct are not admissible to try to prove that the accused did not commit the offense actually charged. What it means in the context of the Signal controversy, specifically with respect to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, is that just because you can conjure up a few worse things that you didn’t do doesn’t mean you didn’t do the bad thing you’re accused of doing.
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