'The media reports are accurate': Trump stuck defending news sites in new criminal filing

Donald Trump's legal team on Wednesday found itself in an unfamiliar position for the former president: defending traditional media sites.

Trump, who has railed against what he has dubbed the "fake news media," on Wednesday claimed in a filing in his criminal case in D.C. that news reports from the New York Times and other sites are "accurate."

The filing, made in support of a motion to dismiss the case for "vindictive and selective prosecution," argues that Jack Smith and his team of prosecutors failed to rebut the ex-president's argument that Joe Biden called for his criminal prosecution. To support its arguments, the legal team for Trump presented news reports.

"If, for example, the New York Times falsely reported that President Biden told others that President Trump 'should be prosecuted,' then why not give the Court and the public peace of mind through the submission of competent evidence, rather than a blustering brief that is full of venom but deflects on the core facts?" the filing from Wednesday asks. "The answer is simple. The media reports are accurate."

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The filing goes on to say, "Despite all of the Special Counsel’s self-aggrandizing comments about the supposedly unprecedented nature of his manufactured allegations against President Trump, the truly unprecedented aspect of this case is that a sitting president successfully urged the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) to try to take down his chief political rival and, now, the leading candidate to be the next president."

"President Biden was so successful, in fact, that the Special Counsel brought two deeply flawed cases against President Trump and has engaged in a reckless effort to proceed to trial in both as soon as possible—even while President Biden anxiously waits to learn whether he will be charged with crimes by a different Special Counsel," the filing states.

Kyle Cheney, senior legal affairs reporter for Politico, noted the thrust of the filing.

"Lawyers for Donald Trump — who famously says anonymous sources are all fictional and the NYT and WaPo are bastions of fake news — argue in a legal filing tonight that two key reports in the NYT and WaPo, based largely on anonymous sources, are thoroughly and accurately reported," Cheney wrote Wednesday. "The lawyers in this case describe the stories more accurately than prosecutors do. But it’s another example of Trump’s attorneys taking a position that is completely at odds with Trump’s rhetoric."