Ex-Trump White House lawyer: Jack Smith's indictment is 'smart and careful'
Special counsel Jack Smith's new indictment against former President Donald Trump for the plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election looks solid, and a real danger to the former president legally.
That's the opinion of Jim Schultz, a former lawyer in the Trump White House, who offered his position on CNN Tuesday evening.
"The lawyers in the room have been champing at the bit ever since we heard," said former prosecutor Laura Coates. "We were in the room, green room like what, what was the argument being made? You've been a former Trump White House lawyer. What is your reaction to the fact that this indictment is here, it's in full black and white?"
"It's very thorough. It's very smart. It's very careful," said Schultz. "And I'll start with careful. It's careful in that they took the First Amendment issues, addressed it, got it off the table. They address the issue of, he has this right to free speech, you can say a lot of things, what he can't do is conspire to overthrow the election. He was very smart in that it kept the co-conspirators out of the indictment. I think that's very smart because what it does is signals that Donald Trump was in charge of this and everybody else was being used as his tool to accomplish his goal. I think that's the message they were trying to send when they left out those co-conspirators."
Trump's attorneys appear set to try to use a First Amendment defense, claiming that the government is punishing him for legally protected speech. But Schultz doesn't expect that will work for them.
"I don't think the jury is going to buy it," Schultz told Coates. "I think the way that they crafted this and said, yes, he has the right to say whatever he wants in the political realm. He does it all the time. But what they're saying here is you can't conspire with others to lie to people, lie to folks to get them to overturn the outcome of an election, lie to the electors, essentially lie about everything associated with that election."
Watch the video below or at the link here.
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