All posts tagged "Election 2020"

Donald Trump’s defenders in the aftermath of his indictment on allegations he tried to overturn the 2020 election are claiming First Amendment protections shield the former president from legal jeopardy, but legal experts call the strategy dubious, The New York Times reports.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment against Trump alleges that the former president pushed claims that the 2020 election was stolen even though he “knew that they were false.”

Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman write for The Times that Trump’s defender’s claim the former president “had every right to express views about election fraud that they say he believed, and still believes, to be true, and that the actions he took or proposed after the election were based on legal advice.”...

As the federal grand jury that could hand down an indictment against former President Donald Trump for January 6 hears evidence, one person called in to speak to them was William Russell, a White House special assistant who was with the former president on the day that rioters stormed the Capitol to try to stop the electoral count on Trump's demand.

Trump's legal team is making a last-ditch ploy, alleging to the federal courts that this is a breach of executive privilege. But, former federal prosecutor Elie Honig told CNN, Trump has a long record of trying and failing to use executive privilege to immunize himself from investigation — and this time will likely be no different.

"This person was there with the former president on January 6th at the Ellipse, at that rally," said anchor Anderson Cooper. "So theoretically, he could testify to the mind frame of the former president. He could even verify things that [White House aide Cassidy] Hutchinson had said."...