Brexit leader Nigel Farage has taken former U.S. Speaker Nancy Pelosi to task for saying Donald Trump must “prove [his] innocence” following an indictment in New York.
“Pelosi says Trump must prove his innocence. Wrong!” said the longtime Trump ally in a post on Elon Musk’s Twitter.
“In free countries that’s now how it works,” Farage added, declaring the Democratic Party is “now very dangerous indeed.”
Pelosi, 83, had written in a Twitter post of her own: “The Grand Jury [which indicted Trump] acted upon the facts and the law.
“No one is above the law, and everyone has a right to prove innocence.
“Hopefully, the former President will peacefully respect the system, which grants him that right.”
In reality, Americans do not have the “right” to prove their innocence, with it being a key principle of American and indeed English law that people accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty — not the other way around.
As of the time of publication, Pelosi’s post had even been slapped with a context note asserting in no uncertain terms: “Ms. Pelosi mistakenly says that Trump can prove his innocence at trial. Law in the US assumes the innocence of a defendant and the prosecution must prove guilt for a conviction.”
The note links out to a Cornell Law School article on the presumption of innocence for anyone looking for further explanation.
“A presumption of innocence means that any defendant in a criminal trial is assumed to be innocent until they have been proven guilty,” it explains, adding that the concept “has been recognized as one of the most basic requirements of a fair trial.”