Jesus, people

I beg you. Stop arguing this ridiculous point.

The tweet published to Trump’s account clearly implied that he already knew that Flynn had deceived the Feds when he fired him back in February: “I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!”

[...]

The Washington Post reported that “Trump’s lawyer John Dowd drafted the president’s tweet, according to two people familiar with the twitter message.” The Associated Press also identified Dowd as the one who “crafted” the tweet, citing “one person familiar with the situation,” though Dowd himself declined to make a comment to the AP.

[...]

One widely shared response, from a person who tweets from the account @nycsouthpaw, focused on a single word in the tweet as grounds for skepticism: “We’re supposed to believe John Dowd wrote ‘pled’ instead of ‘pleaded’?”

  The Atlantic

And twit after twit repeated it. I like @southpaw, but this threw a wrench into the argument that Dowd wrote that tweet. It's pretty damned obvious he didn't and is now, for some reason we can only guess at, taking the blame for it.

The argument that an attorney would never use the word "pled" instead of "pleaded" is a stupid argument. Don't use it. A lawyer dumb enough to take the rap for a client-incriminating tweet would not be a smart man. Regular people use the past tense "pled" - maybe he's used to talking to regular people and not other lawyers because he's inept and doesn't actually do much legal work. Maybe he's keeping his twitter character count down. People tweet "2" for "two" and even for "to". This argument just gives Trumpsters a reason to say Trump-haters are making up any old shit.  And I would be hard pressed to argue that with them in this case.

I'm disappointed in @southpaw (an attorney) and everyone making the argument. I had hoped it wouldn't become a point of contention for all media. I forgot that to hope in the era of Trump is to be disappointed.

And you can bet your last dime that Dowd, whatever term he used in the past (and the Atlantic article claims to have checked and found that indeed he has used "pled" in cases), will now use "pled" every single time.  His ridiculous response to the question is only further circumstantial proof he didn't write the tweet.

If you want to actually try to make a point of proof, has anybody checked on the device from which the tweet was made? If it was Trump's phone, which I'm guessing it was, that rules out Dowd doing it without telling Trump. And if Trump claims Dowd simply drafted the tweet for him to post, where's the phone call, text, or other proof.  Or, if he gave Dowd permission to post on his account, where's the proof of that or of it being tweeted from Dowd's device?

It's absurd on its face to think Trump didn't tweet this himself. He's tweeted himself into corners before, and he'll do it again. He can't sit down and shut up. He thinks he knows everything. And at any rate, it's on his twitter account. It's his responsibility.

And again, if Dowd wrote that tweet inciminating Trump in obstruction of justice, why hasn't he been fired?

We're gonna drive ourselves into a stupor before we get the pleasure of hearing Mueller's final arguments.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.