Your honor, we acknowledge that our client, Jussie Smollett, faked his supposed hate crime but he just couldn't help it because he suffered from extreme Trump Derangement Syndrome.

We respectively request that the civil suit against Nathan Phillips for lying about the Covington Catholic High School students be dropped due to the fact that he was acting under the influence of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Dilbert creator Scott Adams brought up an interesting thesis in a Tweet on Friday about whether Trump Derangement Syndrome could be used as a legal defense in the future for people who acted criminally or immorally.

How long before we see Trump Derangement Syndrome used as a legal defense? "Your honor, my client was brainwashed by the media into believing the fate of the Republic was at stake." Science would back that defense. It's a real thing. https://t.co/CUxxcppkob — Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) February 15, 2019

That reference to the "fate of the Republic" could obviously refer to former FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe who stated (but later denied) that he discussed with DOJ officials the possibility of removing President Donald Trump from office via the 25th Amendment despite the fact you can't use that amendment to remove a president just because you don't like him. Adams went into more detail about using Trump Derangement Syndrome as a legal defense in this video. He also specifically discussed TDS sufferer McCabe.

At what point will Trump Derangement Syndrome be a legitimate legal defense? And it's a more interesting question than you think because the the entire legal system depends on the illusion of free will. ...So we live in a world where it feels like you make your own decisions but science keeps chipping away at that and I would say that it would be easy to get an expert, a psychologist, a scientist, a brain expert to confirm that people are being brainwashed by their choice of media.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I humbly request that you find my client not guilty due to the fact that he watched too much CNN which caused him to get mixed up about the apples and made him go TDS bananas!

And now Adams brings up the possibility that McCabe was brainwashed by his TDS to believe that the 25th Amendment could actually be used for a situation for which it was not intended.

I'm pretty sure that you could prove that, let's say McCabe, and this is just, you know hypothetical none of this is going to happen, but I think you could get scientists to say that McCabe was literally brainwashed to believe that there was a crisis and the Constitution and that something had to be done immediately to save the country. So but would that be a legal defense? Well at them at the moment it would not. You know it might have some effect on sentencing but you couldn't legally get away with that defense.

Your honor, although my client is obviously guilty of being so completely stupid as to think the 25th Amendment could be used to remove a President for no other reason than he just didn't approve of him, I respectfully request that his sentence be reduced due to fact that he was a brainwashed TDS victim.

Adams also cites CNN's Chris Cillizza presenting two contrasting ways of looking at what McCabe claimed to have done regarding the removal of Trump from office which makes me wonder if the Dilbert creator is a reader of Newsbusters since your humble correspondent wrote an article about this same topic on Friday.

There was a piece by Chris Cillizza who is a notable anti-Trumper and I want to just read to you a little bit from him today if I can find it. ...He talked about the news of what McCabe said about the 25th Amendment. He said there are two ways to look at it. One of those ways is that there's a deep state and they were literally talking about a coup using the 25th Amendment to replace the government. So he says that's one way to look at it. Sort of the two movies on one screen idea in his own words. So one way is that it was exactly what a lot of you think. They were talking about a coup but here's the other way. So this is Chris Cillizza, anti-Trumper, telling you the other thing that this evidence could suggest. He says this news from McCabe is confirmation so this is, if you're a Trump opponent you might think this in his framing. This news for McCabe is confirmation that senior officials within the Justice Department were so worried about Trump's behavior in office that they broached the unthinkable: removal by means of the Constitution. The fact that such serious and professional people men and women charged with enforcing the laws of the country were driven to such extreme action or at least the contemplation of such extreme action proves just how abnormal and dangerous Trump really is both to the presidency and the country. Now this is sort of what I was explaining yesterday, the idea that in McCabe's mind he might have been a patriot but only in his mind. Not in your mind obviously. But in his mind he might have thought, "Oh my God! I'm the last defense against Russia running the country!" and so he had to act on that.

Yup, that certainly rings true. Extreme TDS suffered by not only by McCabe but by millions of others including almost all of the mainstream media.

But the way Cillizza frames this is hilarious because it's framed as though there are two possibilities, there are two ways to describe what's happening. One is that it was a deep state plot to overthrow the country or overthrow the government using the 25th Amendment. The second is the President was so sketchy and there were there's so many reasons to think there was something wrong that even if McCabe was incorrect he was operating in good faith against these obvious indications that there was some gigantic problem potentially. ...What's left out is the more obvious option is that CNN and the mainstream media...has illegitimately brainwashed a huge segment of the country into something like Trump Derangement Syndrome. Now that to me is by far the most accurate description of what's probably happening here. I think what's probably happening is that the media got McCabe and other people so whipped up into thinking that something dangerous was happening that ordinary evidence that would not normally climb to the level of discussing the 25th Amendment certainly seemed attenuated.

Your honor, may I place into evidence the statement by Scott Adams that my client acted so absurdly due to his TDS brainwashing by the mainstream media?

p.s. Hello Scott Adams wherever you are!