8 August—Right after dear Donald Trump’s latest indictment last week, I heard his latest hot-shot criminal-defense lawyer, John Lauro, on left-wing radio essentially boast that poor old Donald had committed a federal crime, then bitch about the trial venue and suggest a new one. So I naturally had intended to disquisite about that. But I got sidetracked by pressing local matters.

I hesitated, so I lost the non-scoop scoop to Bloomberg. Them’s the kicks. But here’s the non-news anyway: Lawyer Lauro, protesting that Trump can’t get a fair trial in overwhelmingly liberal Washington, D.C., casually suggested that the trial be moved to, say, West Virginia. Why not?

As it happens, Lawyer Lauro neglected to mention—it must have been an oversight—that West Virginia is overwhelmingly conservative. (Even its senior U.S. Senator, Democrat Joe Manchin, is overwhelmingly conservative.) And did you know that Trump legitimately won the sparsely populated Mountain State’s four electoral votes with 69 percent of the vote? (Or that Biden lawfully won the deceptively named Constitution State’s seven electoral votes with only 59 percent?)

Of course John Lauro knew exactly what he was saying and doing when he made the rounds last week. And yesterday Bloomberg quoted him broadcasting on Face the Nation that client Trump “absolutely” would seek a change of venue and that “We would like a diverse venue, a diverse jury that reflects the characteristics of the American people. . . . I think West Virginia would be an excellent venue to try this case.”

I shouldn’t have thought that Lauro and Trump cared about diversity. But West Virginia certainly is diverse. I mean, whites comprise only 92 percent of the population, blacks over three percent, multiracial another whole three percent. But Asians are clearly underrepresented with less than one percent.

About 80 percent of West Virginians are Christians of one sect or another, a majority of those being evangelicals of one sect or another. And out of about 1.8 million residents, over 100,000 are openly Catholic. Remarkably, the last census exposed as many as 18,000 Jews scattered throughout the Mountain State. Most of them can pass as white Christians if necessary, so there may in fact be more stealth Jews in West Virginia.

The District of Columbia, on the other hand, is one of the most diverse venues in the United States. For instance, fully six percent of the District’s registered voters are actually Republicans. So if Messrs. Trump and Lauro really want diversity in the jury pool, they should do all they can to keep the big trial in Washington, D.C. . . .