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A lawyer for former U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday rejected the premise of a federal indictment alleging that Trump fraudulently tried to overturn his 2020 reelection loss. The lawyer said Trump’s efforts in trying to keep Congress from certifying that Democrat Joe Biden had defeated Trump amounted to constitutionally protected free speech.
Trump lawyer John Lauro appeared on five news talk shows, previewing his defense against the charges filed last week by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith.
A four-count indictment alleged that Trump conspired to defraud the government to stay in power by getting then-Vice President Mike Pence to block congressional certification of the vote and to send the names of fake electors to Congress supporting Trump in states he narrowly lost to Biden.
“When you’re engaging in free speech, you’re not engaging in fraud on the government,” Lauro told CNN’s “State of the Union” show. “Anything you’re alleging is free speech.”
“Asking is aspirational; it’s free speech,” he said of Trump’s demand that Pence pause the congressional certification of the Electoral College vote on January 6, 2021, for 10 days so legislatures in some states Trump lost could reconsider the outcomes in their states. “Mr. Pence rejected that.”
The contentious jousting of Trump’s trial to come is already on full display. Lauro said he would oppose Smith’s bid for a protective order from U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington to keep Trump from disclosing on social media sensitive grand jury testimony in the case or other documents indicating who might be witnesses against him at the trial.
Smith sought the protective order after Trump said Friday in all caps on the Truth Social media site he co-owns, “If you go after me, I’m coming after you!” Trump’s campaign said the warning was aimed at Trump’s Republican political opponents.
Chutkan gave Lauro and other Trump lawyers until 5 p.m. Monday Washington time to respond to Smith’s request for the protective order.
“We will not agree to keep from the public non-sensitive information, from the press,” Lauro said. “I’m shocked that the press has not lined up against this proposed protective order.”
Meanwhile, Trump continued Saturday night to assail Smith and the charge that the former president tried to illegally overthrow the election.
At a political rally in the southern state of South Carolina, Trump said, “We call it a sham indictment. They are trying to make it illegal to question the results of an election,” although, if convicted, he faces years in prison.
He went on to unleash new attacks on Smith, calling him “mentally ill,” “deranged” and “a sick man.”
The election fraud case is the third indictment against Trump in the last four months.
Other cases allege that he illegally hoarded highly classified national security documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after leaving office and that he illegally altered business records at his family real estate conglomerate, the Trump Organization, to hide a hush money payment to a porn film star ahead of his successful 2016 presidential campaign. He also could soon face new election fraud charges in the southern state of Georgia.
Even with his increasing legal perils, Trump is far and away the leading contender among Republican voters for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination, to run again against Biden, who is seeking a second term.
Pence is one of Trump’s Republican presidential nomination opponents but trails badly in national polling of Republicans. Pence is reviled by many Trump supporters for not acceding to Trump’s demand that he block congressional certification of the 2020 outcome on January 6, 2021. About 2,000 Trump supporters rampaged into the U.S. Capitol in a violent riot and some shouted, “Hang Mike Pence!”
On CNN, Pence again defended his actions, saying, “We kept our oath to the Constitution that day. Our country is more important than one man.” Pence said Trump was “asking us to overturn the election that day. I trust my judgment to the American people and history.”
The former second in command said of Trump on the crucial day, “I don’t know what was in his heart that day, what his intentions were that day.”
Pence said he does not recall that Trump ever acknowledged to him that he lost the 2020 election. The indictment alleges that White House aides repeatedly told Trump that Biden had won and that there was no fraud in any of the states Trump narrowly lost that was substantial enough to overturn any of the individual states, let alone enough to upend the national outcome.
Trump to this day contends that voting irregularities and fraud cost him another term in the White House even though in the weeks after the election, he lost dozens of court challenges in states he lost narrowly to Biden.
The Electoral College outcome on January 6 two years ago was crucial because the United States does not elect its president by national popular vote. Rather, the outcome is determined by 50 state-by-state elections, with the biggest states holding the most electoral votes in the Electoral College to determine the national winner.
Chris Christie, another Trump challenger for the Republican presidential nomination, told CNN that the former president’s reaction to the indictment “is what we always see from Donald Trump – insults.”
He said the riot at the Capitol, in which more than 1,000 Trump supporters have been arrested, “is what the president wanted to happen.”
Christie called Trump “a coward” for not joining the protesters, although Trump’s Secret Service contingent refused that day, for security reasons, to take him to the Capitol after Trump demanded to go.
Instead, Christie said, Trump “sat with his overdone hamburger and watched” the riot on television from the safety of the White House.
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