Trump lawyer argues January 6 indictment criminalizes speech
Donald Trump’s attorney John Lauro appeared on NBC’s Today show, and gave a few hints of the former president’s legal strategy in defending against the indictment he faces for trying to overturn the 2020 election.
Lauro first indicated that he objects to special counsel Jack Smith’s push to hold the trial in 90 days, calling it “absurd”:
One of former President Trump’s attorney’s John Lauro speaks about the indictment and the timing of the trial.
“To take President Trump to trial in 90 days, of course, is absurd. The question is why do they (the special counsel) wanna do that,” Lauro told @SavannahGuthrie. pic.twitter.com/WXzSTpii3F
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) August 2, 2023
Smith made a similar attempt with the charges he filed against Trump over the Mar-a-Lago documents, but a federal judge has now pushed that trial to May 2024.
Lauro also indicated that he planned to argue Smith was putting Trump on trial over his speech, which would go against the first amendment:
.@SavannahGuthrie: The indictment specifically says that the President has a first amendment right to speech, he even has a first amendment right to lie. (…) This indictment is criminalizing conduct, not speech.
Lauro: No, it’s criminalizing speech (…) pic.twitter.com/VAo3jCFvwL— TODAY (@TODAYshow) August 2, 2023
Key events
Concerns over January 6 played a role in Fitch downgrade of US debt
Credit agency Fitch’s surprise downgrade of US debt from its top rating yesterday was motivated in part by concerns over the January 6 insurrection, Reuters reports.
“It was something that we highlighted because it just is a reflection of the deterioration in governance, it’s one of many,” senior director at Fitch Ratings Richard Francis told Reuters in an interview.
“You have the debt ceiling, you have Jan. 6. Clearly, if you look at polarization with both parties … the Democrats have gone further left and Republicans further right, so the middle is kind of falling apart basically.”
Fitch now rates US debt at AA+ rather than its top AAA level. The Biden administration is unhappy with the downgrade, which Treasury secretary Janet Yellen called “arbitrary and based on outdated data.”
Fitch is the second of the three major ratings agencies to downgrade US debt. In 2011, S&P downgraded the US from its top level rating after a protracted standoff over raising the debt ceiling.
Donald Trump’s legal troubles are not the only thing happening in the world of American politics. The Guardian’s Mary Yang reports that a prominent Democratic challenger to Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination is, surprise, surprise, being funded by a Republican:
A Super Pac affiliated with Robert F Kennedy Jr, the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist running for president as a Democrat, owes half its cash to a longtime Republican mega-donor and Trump backer, according to campaign finance reports filed on Monday.
The group, American Values 2024, reported receiving $5m from Timothy Mellon, a wealthy businessman from Wyoming, according to NBC News and Politico. It registered with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in April, days before Kennedy officially launched his campaign, according to FEC records.
Mellon, 81, is the grandson of Andrew Mellon, a former US treasury secretary who made his fortune in banking. The Texas Tribune reported that Mellon, a top donor to Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election effort, supported controversial immigration laws and was responsible for 98% of the contributions to the Texas governor Greg Abbott’s fund to build a border wall. Mellon, who twice gave $10m to the Trump-aligned America First Action Super Pac in 2020, also used racist stereotypes to describe Black people in an autobiography he self-published in 2015.
Reporters managed to track down attorney general Merrick Garland somewhere to ask him about the latest indictment against Donald Trump.
Publicly, Garland has taken a hands-off approach to the work of Jack Smith, the special counsel he appointed to investigate the former president. As you can see from the clip below, his response to questions from the press amounts to one long “no comment”:
“[Jack] Smith and … prosecutors have followed the facts and the law wherever they lead. Any questions about this matter will have to be answered by the filings made in court.”
— AG Garland on Tuesday, reacting to Trump’s indictment for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election pic.twitter.com/g3xAcCHTkQ
— The Recount (@therecount) August 2, 2023
Trump lawyer argues January 6 indictment criminalizes speech
Donald Trump’s attorney John Lauro appeared on NBC’s Today show, and gave a few hints of the former president’s legal strategy in defending against the indictment he faces for trying to overturn the 2020 election.
Lauro first indicated that he objects to special counsel Jack Smith’s push to hold the trial in 90 days, calling it “absurd”:
One of former President Trump’s attorney’s John Lauro speaks about the indictment and the timing of the trial.
“To take President Trump to trial in 90 days, of course, is absurd. The question is why do they (the special counsel) wanna do that,” Lauro told @SavannahGuthrie. pic.twitter.com/WXzSTpii3F
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) August 2, 2023
Smith made a similar attempt with the charges he filed against Trump over the Mar-a-Lago documents, but a federal judge has now pushed that trial to May 2024.
Lauro also indicated that he planned to argue Smith was putting Trump on trial over his speech, which would go against the first amendment:
.@SavannahGuthrie: The indictment specifically says that the President has a first amendment right to speech, he even has a first amendment right to lie. (…) This indictment is criminalizing conduct, not speech.
Lauro: No, it’s criminalizing speech (…) pic.twitter.com/VAo3jCFvwL— TODAY (@TODAYshow) August 2, 2023
As the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports, reactions to Trump’s indictment for trying to overturn the 2020 election have thus far fallen mostly along partisan lines:
While Democrats and progressives welcomed Donald Trump’s federal indictment on four charges relating to his attempted election subversion, the former president’s chief rival for the 2024 Republican nomination rallied to his defense.
Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who is a distant second to Trump in primary polling, swiftly issued a statement that notably did not mention Trump by name.
“As president,” DeSantis said, “I will end the weaponization of government, replace the FBI director, and ensure a single standard of justice for all Americans.”
DeSantis, who has indicated he will pardon Trump if elected, said he had not seen the indictment handed down by the special counsel, Jack Smith, regarding Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020. Nonetheless, DeSantis complained that the charges were brought in Washington DC, a Democratic city.
This is now the third indictment Donald Trump has faced this year alone, but historians who spoke to the Washington Post say this one is more serious than the rest.
“Just as the tearing down of the Berlin Wall showed the weakness in the former Soviet Union, the mob on January 6 trying to use force to overturn the will of voters shocked the world and showed our democracy’s weakness,” Rachel Kleinfeld of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the Post.
Here’s more from their story on the indictment’s historical significance:
Historians and legal scholars say the new indictment, brought by federal special prosecutor Jack Smith, is fundamentally more consequential than the earlier ones, which related to hush money paid to an adult-film actress and the mishandling of classified documents.
While those are serious allegations, Tuesday’s indictment accuses a former president of the United States with attempting to subvert the democracy upon which the nation rests. And with Trump again running for the White House, the charges he faces pose an extraordinary test to the rule of law, experts say.
“This gets right to the question of how elections work, how power is transferred peacefully,” said Jon Grinspan, a curator of political history at the National Museum of American History. “This is really a question about the functioning of American democracy.”
Laurence Tribe, a Harvard University legal scholar, said, “The crimes indicted are an order of magnitude beyond anything that has been committed against this country by any American citizen, let alone a former president.”
“This is essentially an indictment for an attempt to overturn the Republic and its most crucial process of preserving democratic governance, the process of peaceful and lawful transition of power,” said Tribe, who taught Barack Obama and advised his presidential campaign and administration.
Americans digest latest charges against Trump ahead of court appearance
Good morning from Washington DC. Tomorrow, Donald Trump will appear at the federal courthouse here to answer the indictment filed against him by special prosecutor Jack Smith, accusing him of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, allegations with few to no peers in American history. This will be his third court appearance this year, the first being in Manhattan to answer charges related to falsifying business records, and the second occurring in Miami, where Smith indicted over allegedly hoarding government documents at Mar-a-Lago.
While the indictment filed yesterday is historic, it was a long time coming, and likely will have done little to change the immediate political dynamics surrounding Trump. He remains a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and polls have recently shown him far and away the frontrunner in the race. He also maintains a dedicated following among GOP voters, to the extent that many rival candidates are hesitant to criticize him directly. We’ll see if any signs emerge of those trends shifting today.
Here’s what else is happening:
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The White House is fuming after ratings agency Fitch downgraded US debt from its highest mark. The agency cited the country’s finances, as well as its repeated bouts of fiscal brinksmanship.
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Who is the sixth co-conspirator? Smith’s indictment against Trump name six people who helped Trump in his alleged plot. Five of these are clearly identifiable based on what we know about the events leading up to January 6, but one, described as a political consultant, is not. Expect lots of digging by the press into who this might be.
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Trump, meanwhile, is doing his usual thing on Truth social, the platform that has become his mouthpiece after getting banned from Twitter following January 6.
It’s just gone 8 am in Washington DC.
I’m going to hand over now to the US politics live blogger, Chris Stein, who will guide you through the rest of the day.
Léonie Chao-Fong
Here are some key takeaways from the latest indictment:
Trump’s legal calendar before the 2024 election
Trump has quite the legal calendar ahead of him, while also seeking to run for president in the 2024 election.
Here is a rundown of all his legal dates alongside the political calendar. As you can see, it’s going to be impossible to untangle the two.
The Trump campaign’s response to the indictment is here. An extract below:
These un-American witch hunts will fail and President Trump will be re-elected to the White House so he can save our Country from the abuse, incompetence, and corruption that is running through the veins of our Country at levels never seen before.
Below is the video of the announcement:
A reader has sent in a couple of questions that I’m sure are on everyone’s mind:
1.) “Will he go to jail”
2.) “Will he run in 2024”
The answer to the first one is “possibly” and the second is “still very likely”.
Trump faces charges that have maximum jail sentences of many, many years.
There is even a scenario in which Trump both goes to jail and runs in 2024 (and even wins!).
University of California, Los Angeles law professor Richard L. Hasen, told CNN that there is no constitutional rule that bars “anyone indicted, or convicted, or even serving jail time, from running as president and winning the presidency”.
“How someone would serve as president from prison is a happily untested question,” Hasen said.
For those just waking up, here is our most recent news story:
Trump summoned to court on Thursday
The former president has been summoned to appear before a federal magistrate judge in Washington DC on Thursday.
Things are moving relatively fast. Jack Smith, the special counsel, said he would seek a “speedy trial”, and stressed that Trump was entitled to a presumption of innocence until proven guilty.
Trump is expected to be arraigned – a formal reading of a criminal charging document in the presence of the defendant – at the DC district court before magistrate judge Moxila A Upadhyaya.
Indictment says Trump knowingly ‘spread lies’
The case against Trump was announced last night by special counsel Jack Smith. He is a federal prosecutor – a government lawyer who is tasked with prosecuting criminal cases.
When announcing the charges, Smith encourages everyone to read in full the 45-page indictment. The document is written in quite a straightforward, readable way, and it packs a punch, calling Trump a liar.
You can read it in full here, but here are parts of the introduction:
“The Defendant [Trump] lost the 2020 presidential election. Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power. So for more than two months following election day … the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false.”
(Note: “outcome-determinative” means that the alleged election fraud was so big that it would have changed the outcome of the election ie mean Trump had won)
Trump charged over attempts to stay in power despite election loss
Oliver Holmes
Donald Trump has been indicted with several crimes in connection with his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in a frenzied attempt to stay in power.
The indictment, filed in federal district court in Washington, charges Trump with one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States, one count of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.
In short (and avoiding legalese) the charges relate to Trump’s alleged effort to deny the American people their democratic right to choose their own leader.
Hello readers! Oliver Holmes here, and I’ll be kicking off today’s US live blog.
There are now a dizzying number of legal cases swirling around the Republican leader, but I promise to try to keep it as simple and straightforward as possible.
The stakes are high. Tuesday’s indictment marks the first time a US president has faced criminal charges for trying to overturn an election. And next year, Americans will vote in an election where Trump looks set to be the Republican candidate.
Stay with us…
