Donald Trump’s lawyers on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Justice Arthur Engoron over the gag orders. | Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Legal
Within hours of the ruling, Trump seized on the opportunity to disparage the law clerk of the judge overseeing his civil fraud trial.
By ERICA ORDEN
Updated
NEW YORK — A state appeals court judge on Thursday temporarily lifted a gag order that barred Donald Trump from speaking about the staff of the judge overseeing an ongoing $250 million civil fraud trial against the former president.
Within hours of the ruling, Trump seized on the new leeway and denigrated the trial judge’s principal law clerk on social media.
“Considering the constitutional and statutory rights at issue an interim stay is granted,” Associate Justice David Friedman of the Appellate Division, First Department wrote in a brief order. Friedman’s order also paused a gag order that barred the lawyers involved in the trial from making comments about “confidential communications” between the trial judge, Justice Arthur Engoron, and his staff.
Engoron’s initial gag order on Trump came early in the civil fraud trial after Trump posted a disparaging social media message depicting the judge’s law clerk, Allison Greenfield, who sits alongside the judge on the bench. Engoron found that Trump subsequently violated the gag order twice, issuing him two fines totaling $15,000.
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Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has charged Trump with 34 felony counts for allegedly falsifying business records in connection with hush money payments to a porn star. | Mary Altaffer/AP
Legal
Prosecutors in Trump’s hush money case shot back against Trump’s bid to get the charges dismissed.
By ERICA ORDEN
NEW YORK — Prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office accused Donald Trump of trying to use his presidential campaign to shield himself from prosecution, saying in a new court filing that his effort to dismiss his criminal case over hush money payments is “essentially an attempt to evade criminal responsibility” merely because he is “politically powerful.”
“Defendant repeatedly suggests that because he is a current presidential candidate, the ordinary rules for criminal law and procedure should be applied differently here,” prosecutors from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office wrote in the 99-page document. “Courts have repeatedly rejected defendant’s demands for special treatment and instead have adhered to the core principle that the rule of law applies equally to the powerful as to the powerless.”
Prosecutors filed the court papers in response to Trump’s October motion to dismiss the criminal case, which his lawyers wrote “has prejudiced President Trump and the public by interfering with his presidential campaign.” The former president’s lawyers, Todd Blanche and Susan Necheles, also denounced the prosecution as “delayed,” and criticized the timing of the charges, saying they stemmed “from a grand jury investigation that commenced approximately ten weeks after President Trump announced his candidacy.”
In the New York case, Trump is charged with 34 felony counts concerning his alleged falsification of business records connected to hush money payments made to silence affair allegations from porn star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential campaign. According to the indictment, Trump directed that reimbursements made to former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen for money he paid Daniels be falsely recorded as legal expenses in the Trump Organization ledgers.
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Alluding to Trump’s run for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said the election cycle “does not go into the calculus” when it comes to her office’s work. | John Bazemore/AP
Legal
Alluding to Trump’s run for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, Willis said the election cycle “does not go into the calculus” when it comes to her office’s work.
By GISELLE RUHIYYIH EWING
Updated
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Tuesday called a video leak of witness proffers in the election subversion case against former President Donald Trump “disappointing” but not “surprising” — adding that prosecutors have since filed an emergency request for a protective seal.
Willis also said that she believes the trial in the sprawling racketeering case against Trump and 18 codefendants could potentially continue until early 2025, in an interview at a Washington Post global women’s summit.
“I believe in that case there will be a trial,” Willis said. “I believe the trial will take many months. And I don’t expect that we will conclude until the winter or the very early part of 2025.”
Alluding to Trump’s run for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, Willis said the election cycle “does not go into the calculus” when it comes to her office’s work.
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The judges agreed to temporarily suspend Donald Trump’s gag order — and set an expedited timeline to consider the matter — earlier this month. | Frank Franklin II/AP
Legal
The special counsel’s office argued that Trump has exploited two temporary suspensions of the gag order to assail prosecutors and witnesses.
By KYLE CHENEY
Former President Donald Trump’s renewed attacks on the family of special counsel Jack Smith and his repeated invective against likely witnesses in his Washington, D.C. criminal case warrant the urgent restoration of a gag order against him, prosecutors argued Tuesday.
Smith’s team urged a federal appeals court in Washington to reinstate the gag order — which a three-judge panel suspended earlier this month — amid Trump’s appeal of the restrictions imposed by U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan.
The prosecutors argued that Trump has exploited two temporary suspensions of the gag order to mount some of his most inflammatory attacks on prosecutors and witnesses.
“The defendant here has taken advantage of administrative stays to engage in targeting of witnesses, as well as prosecutors and their families,” Smith’s team wrote in the 67-page filing.
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Special counsel Jack Smith speaks to the media on Aug. 1 about an indictment of Donald Trump in Washington. | Francis Chung/POLITICO
Legal
ABC’s Jonathan Karl offers an account of a fateful July 27 meeting in his forthcoming book.
By KYLE CHENEY
Jack Smith’s public image, shaped by his near invisibility since taking over the federal criminal cases against Donald Trump, has been that of a sullen, brooding and hard-charging prosecutor.
His steely glare, on display in two arraignments of the former president and in a handful of public photos and videos, has contributed to a sort of mythology around the veteran corruption prosecutor.
And when Smith met privately with Trump’s lawyers — who were making their final bid to stave off an indictment in Washington, D.C. — he didn’t break character.
ABC’s Jonathan Karl offers an account of the fateful July 27 meeting in his forthcoming book, “Tired of Winning,” that suggests Smith took the same wordless, unsmiling approach to Trump’s attorneys that he’s presented in his few public appearances.
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Former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Hialeah, Fla., on Wednesday. | Lynne Sladky/AP
politics
Democrats shouldn’t rely on Trump’s legal troubles to sink him next year.
Opinion by RICH LOWRY
A lot can happen in a year, and Democrats worried about Joe Biden’s lackluster showing in polls against Donald Trump are hoping it will — in courtrooms across America.
Prosecutors currently want Trump to stand trial in three separate felony cases next March alone (over Jan. 6, the Stormy Daniels hush payments, and the Georgia election case), and then there’s the classified documents case slated for May.
One felony trial would be extraordinary given the fact that we’ve never seen such a thing before with a former president. Four is almost unfathomable, and would have been utterly unthinkable from the perspective of just a couple of years ago.
Democrats figure — or at least hope — that a conviction or two will finish Trump and make up for Biden’s vulnerabilities. This isn’t an unreasonable expectation, but they shouldn’t bank on it.
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Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich speaks to the press outside of the Dirksen Federal Courthouse on Aug. 2, 2021 in Chicago, Illinois. | Scott Olson/Getty Images
Politics
The former Illinois governor lauded Trump for “the kind of chutzpah he shows … right there in the lion’s den.”
By ERIC BAZAIL-EIMIL
Donald Trump inflicted chaos on a New York courtroom on Monday when he testified in a civil trial about his company’s business practices. He frustrated the judge and prosecutors and appeared to make damning admissions on the stand.
And Rod Blagojevich thinks that’s the perfect play for Trump.
The former Illinois governor, who served eight years in prison on federal corruption charges before Trump commuted his sentence, cheered the former president from afar and told POLITICO in an interview that Trump’s combativeness was beyond appropriate.
“President Trump has every reason to be testy with that judge,” Blagojevich said on Tuesday. “Here’s another example of how brave he is, willing to stand up and do what he’s doing in front of the judge, who’s going to actually make a ruling and decision on his case.”
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Donald Trump waits to take the witness stand on Monday in his fraud case in Manhattan. | Pool photo by Curtis Means
Legal
His conduct during his civil fraud case has been volatile. His upcoming criminal trials will carry greater restrictions on what he can do and say.
By ERICA ORDEN
NEW YORK — In the six weeks since the start of the $250 million civil fraud trial against Donald Trump, the former president has preened and glowered before news cameras in the courthouse halls.
He has scowled, arms crossed in his seat at the defense table, whispering to his lawyers or throwing his hands in the air. He has earned himself a gag order, then a fine for violating the gag order and then a second fine for violating it again. He has abruptly exited the courtroom during proceedings.
And on Monday, he put on a surly, volatile performance on the witness stand, lashing out at the judge and perceived political enemies, attempting to read from a note he retrieved from his suit pocket and generally making little effort to curb the type of meandering monologues he regularly offers on the campaign trail.
The fraud trial is just the first in a long stretch of legal battles the former president is set to endure as he seeks to return to the White House next year. And it’s the public’s first glimpse of how candidate Trump conducts himself in and around the courtroom. Though his behavior — defiant, exasperated and often unruly — is no surprise, it is likely merely a taste of what’s to come.
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Special counsel Jack Smith filed an expansive rebuttal to Donald Trump’s most recent arguments seeking to get one of his indictments thrown out. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP
Legal
In new court documents, the special counsel articulated his clearest case yet for Trump’s prosecution for election subversion.
By KYLE CHENEY
Special counsel Jack Smith argued Monday that Donald Trump’s bid to subvert the 2020 election was far from a case of misplaced “advocacy” or constitutionally protected speech, and he urged the federal judge presiding over Trump’s Washington, D.C., trial to sweep aside Trump’s bid to “sanitize” his conduct.
“The defendant attempts to rewrite the indictment, claiming that it charges him with wholly innocuous, perhaps even admirable conduct — sharing his opinions about election fraud and seeking election integrity,” wrote assistant special counsel James Pearce, “when in fact it clearly describes the defendant’s fraudulent use of knowingly false statements as weapons in furtherance of his criminal plans.”
In a 79-page filing, Smith’s team articulated its clearest case yet for Trump’s prosecution, repeatedly characterizing Trump’s false claims of election fraud as knowing lies aimed at defrauding election officials — from secretaries of state and governors to his own vice president, Mike Pence. Smith also indicated he intends to introduce evidence in Trump’s March trial that Trump stoked the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol and then used it to further his effort to derail Congress’ proceedings that day. Prosecutors say they will rely on Trump’s promise to pardon many of the rioters, his description of Jan. 6 as a “beautiful day” and his decision to record a song with some of the violent offenders imprisoned in the Washington, D.C., jail.
The filings were a rebuttal to Trump’s own efforts to dismiss the indictment, which charges him with mounting a sweeping campaign to pressure state and local election officials to throw out Joe Biden’s victory in closely fought swing states. That campaign of “deceit,” they say, continued with Trump’s effort to assemble false slates of presidential electors, which Pearce contended were meant merely to provoke the pretext of a controversy when Congress met to count the votes on Jan. 6.
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Protesters, hordes of reporters and curious pedestrians gathered on Monday around the Manhattan courthouse, where the fate of Trump’s real estate empire was to be decided. | Stefan Jeremiah/AP
New York
Protesters, hordes of media and a free-talking Trump made for a bizarre scene in the storied Manhattan courthouse.
By JASON BEEFERMAN
NEW YORK — One protester held a sign showing former President Donald Trump in a prison jumpsuit behind bars. Another sign screamed “Invoke the 14th” amendment to bar Trump from running for president again.
The scene outside the Manhattan courthouse — and inside, of course — was a historic one. Trump took the stand in a case that goes to the heart of his career and persona: whether he’s actually as rich and as successful as he claimed.
The mood Monday fit the moment. Protesters, hordes of reporters and curious pedestrians gathered around the downtown courthouse, where the fate of Trump’s real estate empire was to be decided after Judge Arthur Engoron ruled Trump is liable for fraudulently inflating the value of his assets.
Trump supporters ripped the case — which has become a rallying cry for him and his backers on overzealous prosecutors, particularly Democratic state Attorney General Tish James, who has become a regular target in his stump speeches.
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New York
New York attorney general brings high-profile case to the former president in her long fight with him.
By NICK REISMAN
ALBANY, N.Y. — Grilling former President Donald Trump under oath is a dream for much of the Democratic Party’s base. New York Attorney General Tish James made it happen.
Trump’s appearance Monday as a key witness in the civil fraud case her office is bringing against him and his business empire is the latest touchstone moment for James, a Democrat first elected in 2018.
“It’s probably the most visible case ever brought by the state attorney general’s office,” former state Attorney General Bob Abrams, a Democrat, proclaimed.
For her allies, it’s an episode that underscores her progressive credentials in a heavily Democratic state where Trump remains deeply unpopular with most voters.
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Former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden in their final debate in 2020. | Morry Gash/AP
analysis | politics
It’s why taking down Trump will be so difficult.
By JEFF GREENFIELD
Those New York Times polls showing President Joe Biden trailing in almost every key state surely spiked Maalox sales among Democrats; they led former Barack Obama advisor David Axelrod to suggest that the president might take a look at the “EXIT” signs at his campaign headquarters.
Some Biden supporters and sympathetic analysts tried to dismiss the polls, noting Election Day is still a year away. There’s a whole campaign to run, after all. But the truth is, Biden faces a difficult hurdle that previous embattled incumbents never had to contend with: a sharply diminished chance to “define” the opponent.
One of the most common assertions about a reelection campaign is that “the contest is always about the incumbent.” That’s often wildly off the mark. An election is really a choice — not a referendum — and so a troubled incumbent can survive by painting the challenger as unacceptable. It can lead to incumbent landslides, when a challenger’s campaign more or less implodes amid charges of extremism; think of Barry Goldwater alienating half the Republican Party in 1964 or George McGovern losing the center-right of the Democratic Party in 1972.
But a deft incumbent doesn’t always need an intra-party schism. In 2004, the campaign of President George W. Bush argued that John Kerry was too risky an alternative to be commander-in-chief, too inconsistent, too inclined to shift with the wind (cue the clip of Kerry windsurfing). Kerry’s own self-inflicted wound was the memorable statement that “I actually did vote for the $87 billion [Iraq War money] before I voted against it.”
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NEW YORK
In a series of outbursts while testifying, Trump assailed the judge who is overseeing his civil fraud case.
By ERICA ORDEN
Updated
NEW YORK — Testimony by Donald Trump in a civil fraud trial Monday quickly descended into bitter sniping as Trump’s discursive answers and outbursts prompted the judge to repeatedly admonish him.
During his four hours on the witness stand, the former president lost his temper and attacked the judge, railing against the person who will decide the fate of his business empire and suggesting one of his pretrial rulings was “very stupid.” Trump continually flouted the judge’s instructions to provide succinct and direct answers to questions, instead offering much of the political animus Trump typically deploys on the campaign trail.
“It’s a terrible thing you’ve done. You know nothing about me,” Trump said to Justice Arthur Engoron during one verbal strike from the witness stand. “You believe that political hack back there,” he added, looking toward New York Attorney General Tish James, who brought the $250 million civil fraud case against Trump, his adult sons and officers in the Trump Organization.
In a crucial pretrial ruling, the judge found that Trump systematically inflated his assets on financial statements to obtain favorable terms from banks and insurers. Because it is a bench trial, meaning there is no jury, Engoron will decide what penalties Trump and his company will face.
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Former President Donald Trump walks off stage after a rally on Oct. 29, 2023, in Sioux City, Iowa. | Charlie Neibergall/AP
Trump Indictment
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan had briefly paused the gag order in the federal election case, but she put it back into effect Sunday while Trump appeals.
By KYLE CHENEY and JOSH GERSTEIN
Updated
A federal judge has reinstated a gag order against Donald Trump, lifting a temporary hold she placed on it earlier this month and rejecting his claim that it unconstitutionally limits his free speech.
U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan paused the gag order on Oct. 20 amid Trump’s complaint that it was confusingly worded and request that she keep it on hold while he asked a federal appeals court to throw it out altogether.
But in a nine-page Sunday evening opinion, Chutkan reinstated her order, rejecting his claims that the order was unclear and that it unconstitutionally restricted his free speech rights. In addition, Chutkan noted that one of Trump’s recent statements — an attack on his former chief of staff Mark Meadows — would “almost certainly violate the order” had it been in effect.
Trump, citing an ABC report that Meadows had accepted immunity to testify to federal prosecutors, said last week that such cooperation was for “weaklings” and “cowards” and that any unfavorable testimony about him would have been a “lie.” Chutkan said this remark would plainly have cut against her order had it been in effect, “and for good reason.”
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After Ivanka Trump was dismissed as a defendant four months ago, defense attorneys and her lawyer contended that she shouldn’t have to testify, noting that she moved out of New York and left her Trump Organization job in 2017. | Molly Riley-Pool/Getty Images
Legal
The ruling came weeks into the trial of New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit against former President Donald Trump, sons Don Jr. and Eric, the Trump Organization and some executives.
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK — Ivanka Trump must take the witness stand in the civil fraud case against her father, her brothers and their family business, a judge ruled Friday.
The ruling came weeks into the trial of New York Attorney General Tish James’ lawsuit against former President Donald Trump, sons Don Jr. and Eric, the Trump Organization and some executives.
After Ivanka Trump was dismissed as a defendant four months ago, defense attorneys and her lawyer contended that she shouldn’t have to testify, noting that she moved out of New York and left her Trump Organization job in 2017. The state’s lawyers argued that the former Trump Organization executive vice president has relevant information.
Judge Arthur Engoron sided with the state, citing documents showing that Ivanka Trump continued to have ties to some businesses in New York and still owns Manhattan apartments.
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After less than 15 minutes of discussion at a meeting Thursday in Minneapolis, the advisory panel agreed on its response to the Trump-focused request. | Andrew Kelly-Pool/Getty Images
Trump Indictment
A courts committee says it lacks authority to modify a broadcasting ban in time for the historic criminal cases against the former president.
By JOSH GERSTEIN
A federal judicial panel has turned down a bid to allow live television coverage of two historic criminal trials of former President Donald Trump scheduled for next year.
Without apparent dissent, a committee that handles potential changes to the federal courts’ criminal rules concluded Thursday that it had no ability to alter the existing ban on broadcasting federal criminal trials. Thirty-eight Democratic House members and some media outlets had requested that the rules be changed or an exception be created to allow Trump’s looming federal trials to be televised.
“We have an absolute rule,” said the panel’s secretary, or “reporter,” Duke Law Professor Sara Sun Beale. “We have no authority to authorize exceptions to an across-the-board, straight rule.”
The head of the Advisory Committee on Criminal Rules, U.S. District Judge James Dever, also said the glacial pace federal law prescribes for amending federal court rules means that, even if the panel approved a change, it wouldn’t take effect until 2026 or 2027.
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Undoubtedly aware that many ACLU supporters will be surprised to see the organization coming to Trump’s defense, the group’s filing includes a blunt condemnation of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. | Noam Galai/Getty Images
Legal
The civil liberties group argued that the directive from a D.C. federal judge violates Trump’s First Amendment rights and the public’s right to hear what he has to say.
By JOSH GERSTEIN
Updated
For four years during former President Donald Trump’s presidency, the American Civil Liberties Union was one of his biggest courtroom adversaries. Now, the group is taking his side in a high-profile fight over what Trump can say as a criminal defendant.
The ACLU on Wednesday stepped into the battle over Trump’s federal gag order, arguing that U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan violated Trump’s First Amendment rights as well as the public’s right to hear him when she issued the order earlier this month. Chutkan is presiding over the criminal case special counsel Jack Smith is pursuing against Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
“The obvious and unprecedented public interest in this prosecution, as well as the widespread political speech that it has generated and will continue to generate, only underscores the need to apply the most stringent First Amendment standard to a restraint on Defendant’s speech rights,” ACLU attorneys wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief.
The group urged Chutkan to reevaluate her order, calling it both vague and overbroad, with aspects of its meaning “unknown and perhaps unknowable.” One particular uncertainty the ACLU seized on was the meaning of Chutkan’s prohibition on statements that “target” Smith, his prosecutors, court personnel, defense attorneys or witnesses.
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Jenna Ellis (center) has pleaded guilty to a reduced charge over efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss. | John Bazemore/AP
Legal
Prosecutors are increasingly pitting ex-members of Donald Trump’s legal team against him.
By KYLE CHENEY, BETSY WOODRUFF SWAN and JOSH GERSTEIN
In two courtrooms 800 miles apart on Tuesday, a stark reality for former President Donald Trump became clearer than ever: If Trump is taken down in his myriad criminal and civil cases, it will likely be at the hands of his own former lawyers.
In the morning, Jenna Ellis pleaded guilty to an election felony in Georgia and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors who have charged Trump and various allies with a racketeering conspiracy to subvert the 2020 election. She became the third Trump-affiliated lawyer in the past week to flip in the Georgia election case.
Then, in the afternoon, Trump’s longtime personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, took the witness stand in Manhattan and told a judge how his former boss fraudulently inflated his net worth.
Trump’s lawyers have long served as a force field separating him from investigators and prosecutors targeting him. He and his allies have invoked attorney-client privilege to shield potential evidence, and Trump has even floated an “advice of counsel” defense in some of his criminal cases, arguing that he cannot be guilty because he was simply following the advice of his lawyers.
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Legal
Jenna Ellis is the third Trump-aligned attorney to plead guilty to crimes stemming from the 2020 election, joining Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro.
By JOSH GERSTEIN and KYLE CHENEY
Updated
Jenna Ellis, a Trump campaign attorney who worked with Rudy Giuliani to press state legislatures to overturn the 2020 election results, pleaded guilty Tuesday to a felony charge that she participated in an effort to make false statements to Georgia lawmakers about election fraud.
Ellis is the third Trump-aligned attorney in recent days to plead guilty to crimes stemming from the 2020 election, joining Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, who each accepted deals to admit to aspects of the charges brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
All three lawyers had been charged alongside Donald Trump and many of his other allies with a sprawling racketeering conspiracy. Their pleas may reshape the case against Trump, supplying prosecutors with testimony from some of his closest advisers, who are now admitting for the first time that some of their actions crossed the line into criminality.
“If I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post-election challenges,” Ellis said through tears during a court appearance in Atlanta Tuesday morning.
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Former President Donald Trump argued that the indictment “does not explain” how he violated the laws he’s charged with breaking. | Charles Krupa/AP
Legal
In series of dismissal motions, Trump makes his move to upend special counsel Jack Smith’s Washington, D.C., case.
By KYLE CHENEY
Former President Donald Trump has launched a multifront legal attack on the federal charges he’s facing in Washington, D.C., arising from his bid to subvert the 2020 election.
In three motions to dismiss the case filed just before midnight, Trump contended that the case mounted against him by special counsel Jack Smith sought to criminalize his views on the 2020 election and efforts to lobby state lawmakers and Congress.
Trump argued that the indictment — which charges him with conspiring to obstruct Congress’ certification of the 2020 election, conspiring to deprive Americans of a fair election process and conspiring to defraud government officials administering the election — “does not explain” how he violated the laws he’s charged with breaking. He says the charges violate his First Amendment right to petition government officials to act on his concerns about the 2020 election. He contends his acquittal by the Senate in an impeachment trial days after leaving office bars him from being prosecuted for related conduct. And he says President Joe Biden’s reported statements about the case require an inquiry regarding selective prosecution, if not outright dismissal.
The filings, combined with an earlier motion to dismiss the case citing his “immunity” from prosecution for his conduct as president, represent Trump’s full strategy for preventing the case against him from ever reaching a jury. Trump repeatedly points to the unprecedented nature of the charges against him and says crimes he’s accused of were not meant to criminalize what he did in his final, frenzied bid to remain in power.
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