COUNTER-ACCUSATION

The counter accusation is a retaliation strategy in which the defendant:
— Acknowledges the existence of the facts (the moped was burned) and their qualification (it is a misdemeanor).
— Denies being the author of the crime, and attributes it to someone else, see Stasis.

Accusation: — You stole the moped! (1)
Reaction of the defendant: He accuses:

— A third person: But it’s not me, it’s the boss! (2)
— His accuser:

– Of the crime of which he himself is accused:
                        You stole the moped! it is hee who says who it is! (3)
– Of another crime:
And you, stole a backpack on the train! (4)

The reply (4) can be taken as an implicit confession and can also be used to allow the prosecution of the new defendant.

A common strategy

The strategy of counter-accusing the accuser works in the most diverse types of courts.

[1] An Inuit duel song from Ammassalik: “ They say that I am a sorcerer” (quoted from Paul-Émile Victor, 1991, p. 38). Uerna is the singer, accused of witchcraft

My mood is frozen
My mood is sorrowful
My mood is unhappy
Because someone said
That I am a sorcerer, that I bewitch people
I’ve no idea about that, I never heard about
witchcraft nor magic.
I am only
a man, a man like everyone else
I am just an old man
My opponent in the singing duel
Uerna is much younger than me
and people say that he knows how to bewitch,
that he knows witchcraft

[2] A witchcraft trial in the Basque Country, 17th century.

Shortly before the sending of the royal commission of which de Lancre would be a member, significant events had already taken place, in the same places, and with the same characters that we will see reappear […]: Local rivalries between family groups had given rise to accusations of witchcraft, a quick but disastrous way of getting rid of the rival group, which in turn resorted to the same procedure.
Pierre De Lancre, [A Picture of the inconstancy of evil angels and demons, where it is amply spoken about sorcerers and witchcraft] 1612 [2]

[3] In the Chinese re-education camps

The strategy  works dramatically in political trials, especially when the accuser is the judge.

The láogăi “is a re-education through labor camp in the People’s Republic of China” (Wikipedia, Laogai).

Finally, as we have seen in the laogai, whoever accuses, in communist China, is always right,  armed he is with untouchable quotations and slogans; you almost systematically make your case worse by defending yourself. The only effective response therefore is a counter-accusation at a higher level: whether it is well-founded or not is of little importance, as long as it is couched in politically correct terms. The logic of the debate thus leads to a constant widening of the field of attacks, of the number of attack and of the number of those attacked.
Stéphane Courtois & al. [The Black Book of Communism] 1997 [2]

[4] In the USA courts

“You are fake news!”.
Trump’s Impeachment defense borrows an old Karl Rove strategy — Ed Kilgore (The Guardian, 11. 13, 2019)

There’s a Rovian strategic principle that Team Trump is following to absolute perfection before and during the impeachment proceedings the president now faces, as explained in a 2005 academic discussion of Rove’s campaign modus operandi :
            Tactic #3: Accuse Your Opponent of What He/She is Going to Accuse You Of
This is another preemptive tactic, in which Bush has launched his campaigns by accusing his opponent of his own weaknesses.[4]

[1] Christian Plantin, Nicole Tersis 2022. Attack, defense and counterattack in the duel songs of Ammassalik (Greenland). In Christian Plantin (ed) 2022, Argumentation through languages and cultures Springer/ 2019, 
Previously published in  Argumentation, Special Issue 35 (1): 51-72,
Song quoted from VICTOR Paul-Emile 1991, Chants d’Ammassalik. Copenhagen, Meddelelser om GrØnland, Man & Society.
[2] Pierre De Lancre. Tableau de l’inconstance des mauvais anges et démons, où il est amplement traité des sorciers et de la sorcellerie, 1612. Introduced and annotated by Nicole Jacques-Chaquin. Paris, Aubier, 1982, p. 8.
[3] Courtois Stéphane, Werth Nicolas, Jean-Louis Panné, Paczkowski Andrzej, Margolin Jean-Louis 1997. Le livre noir du communisme – Crimes, terreur, répression. Paris, Robert Laffont, p. 582
[4] http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/11/team-trump-deploying-rovian-strategy-of-accusing-accusers.html