WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump’s defense attorney says the former president never asked mike pence nullify the will of voters in the 2020 election, but he only wanted the former vice president to “pause” vote certification to allow states to investigate his allegations of voter fraud. Those unsubstantiated claims had already been rejected by numerous courts.
Speaking on various Sunday morning news shows, Trump’s lawyer Juan Laura said Trump was well within his First Amendment rights when he asked Pence to delay the certification on January 6, 2021.
“Vice President Pence’s last request was to pause the counts and allow the states to intervene,” Lauro said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” He added that Trump was convinced that there were irregularities in the election that needed to be investigated by state authorities before the election could be certified.
The former president also lashed out on Sunday at the judge overseeing the case, US District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan. On his Truth Social platform, Trump said his legal team would “immediately request the recusal of this judge” as well as move the case out of Washington.
The pronouncements were Trump’s latest legal dispute, brought to the public eye, as he faces charges that could carry decades in prison if convicted.
Trump pleaded not guilty to those charges. Separately, he also faces charges that falsified business records in connection with hush money payments to a porn actor in New York and incorrectly saved classified documents at his Palm Beach, Florida, resort and obstructed an investigation into his driving.
Last week’s indictment recounts how Trump and his allies, in what special counsel Jack Smith described as an attack on a “critical function of the US government,” repeatedly lied about the results in the two months after the loss of the election and pressured Pence and election officials to take steps to help him cling to power. Those efforts culminated on January 6, 2021, when Trump supporters violently stormed the Capitol in an effort to stop the certification.
Speaking on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” Lauro said Pence’s testimony will show that Trump believed the election was rigged and was listening to the advice of his lawyers when he tried to delay certification. Pence, who appeared before the grand jury that indicted Trump, said he will abide by the law if asked to testify.
“I can’t wait until I have the opportunity to cross-examine Mr. Pence,” Lauro said. “It will completely remove any doubt that President Trump firmly believed that election irregularities had led to an improper result.”
Pence, who like Trump is seeking the Republican nomination for president in 2024strongly denied that Trump was simply seeking a “pause” from certification during an interview Sunday, saying that Trump seemed “convinced” as early as December that Pence had the right to reject or return votes and that on January 5, Trump’s lawyers they told him ” “We want you to reject the vows completely.”
“They asked me to annul the elections. He had no right to overturn the election,” Pence said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Pence’s role in certifying Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 election makes him a central figure in the prosecution of Trump on charges that he sought to override the will of the voters and remain in office even after that the courts flatly rejected their allegations of voter fraud. Federal and state election officials and Trump’s own attorney general also said there was no credible evidence that the election was tainted.
The 45-page indictment details how Trump was repeatedly told by people close to Trump that he had lost and that there was no truth to his fraud claims. In a meeting days before the riots, Trump told Pence that he was “too honest” after the vice president said he did not have the authority to disallow electoral votes, the indictment says.
Former Trump allies have said that Trump knew he had lost but spread false claims about fraud anyway. After he failed to convince state officials to illegally swing the election, Trump and his allies recruited fake voters in swing states sign certificates that falsely claimed that Trump had prevailed.
“He knew very well that he had lost the election,” Trump’s former attorney general, Bill Barr, told CNN last week.
Lauro said that Trump’s defense team will seek to remove the case from Washington because they want a more diverse jury. He said he would support televising the trial and dismissed speculation that it could conclude before the 2024 election.
“In 40 years of practicing law, in a case of this magnitude, I haven’t known a single case go to trial before two or three years,” Lauro said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
In response to questions about whether Trump can have a fair trial in the nation’s capital, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a former federal prosecutor and Republican, said yes.
“Yes, I think juries can be fair. I believe in the American people,” Christie said Sunday on CNN.
Scores of people charged in the January 6 riots have sought to have their trials moved outside of Washington. However, the judges have rejected those motions in all cases, to say that fair jurors can be found with proper cross-examination.
Trump’s legal team has until 5 p.m. Monday to respond to the prosecutor’s request for a protection order limiting Trump’s ability to publicly release information about the case. The decision is up to Chutkan.
Protection orders are common in criminal cases, but prosecutors said they are “particularly important in this case” because Trump has posted on social media about “witnesses, judges, attorneys and others associated with pending legal matters against him.” .
Prosecutors specifically pointed to a post on Truth Social on Friday in which Trump wrote, in all capital letters: “If you go after me, I’ll go after you!”
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