Suppose a powerful politician is delusional and detached from reality, and he pressures a lower ranking politician to do something which if you accept his delusions would not involve anything illegal but which in reality could not be accomplished without doing illegal things. How do you treat this? Do you say as a practical matter the guy was pressuring him to do something illegal? Or do you say in his own distorted view of the world he didn’t ask for anything illegal?
[The Trump connection has to do with Trump’s pressuring of election officials like Raffensperger to find him enough votes for him to win the state. Assume (as I do, but don’t want to argue it here, so let’s stipulate for purposes of the question) that Trump genuinely believes that he won the state in a landslide and any honest and thorough investigation would uncover this. But on the other hand Raffensperger et al know that 1) Trump didn’t win the state and an honest and thorough investigation would not uncover anything of the sort, and 2) nothing in the world will convince Trump of that, and he will dismiss any investigation which fails to find him winning as being corrupt or superficial, such that the only way to satisfy Trump’s demands would be to commit fraud. Question then is how to look at Trump. In his mind, he’s only looking for an honest and thorough investigation. But that’s only based on a distorted view of reality, and from the perspective of some in touch with reality they are being pressured to commit fraud. How does the law view that?]