Donald Trump has been charged criminally for conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The indictment, along with the other two that have been leveled against the former president this year, is different from most of his other scandals in that it will ultimately be litigated in a court of law. Trump can’t just dispatch his minions to spew nonsense on cable news and hope the problem goes away.
He is definitely still doing that, though. John Lauro, one of the lawyers by Trump’s side as he pleaded not guilty on Thursday, has been particularly active in front of the camera. He tried to claim Tuesday on CNN that the case was merely a First Amendment issue before arguing there’s nothing wrong with submitting an alternate slate of electors. He then went on Fox News after the arraignment, where he went ahead and admitted Trump directed the scheme to hold up the Electoral College certification.
“Ultimately, what President Trump said is: Let’s go with Option D. Let’s just pause the voting and allow the state legislature to take one last look and to make a determination as to whether the elections were handled fairly. That’s just constitutional law. That’s not an issue of criminal activity.”
Lauro said the same thing on Newsmax later on Thursday. “He asked Mr. Pence to pause the voting for 10 days, allow the state legislatures to weigh in, and then they could make a determination to audit or reaudit or recertify,” he said. Lauro defended Trump by arguing that he didn’t call to “send in the tanks.”
Unfortunately for Trump, what Lauro is describing here is, in fact, illegal. John Eastman, who masterminded the plan for Mike Pence to halt the counting of the Electoral College, even admitted it.
“At 11:44 p.m., Co-Conspirator 2 emailed the Vice President’s Counsel advocating that the Vice President violate the law and seek further delay of the certification,” the indictment reads, with “Co-Conspirator 2” referring to Eastman. “Co-Conspirator 2 wrote, ‘I implore you to consider one more relatively minor violation [of the ECA] and adjourn for 10 days to allow the legislatures to finish their investigations, as well as to allow a full forensic audit of the massive amount of illegal activity that has occurred here.”
Trump’s team is also sure to argue that the former president truly believed he won the election, despite the indictment laying out how several people around him — people who wanted him to win the election — explained to him that he lost. Alina Habba, another Trump lawyer, went ahead and confirmed to the press on Thursday that “everybody was made aware that he lost the election.”
“I think that everybody was made aware that he lost the election” — oh, so she admits it pic.twitter.com/FxLSvUVESN
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 3, 2023
Trump’s lawyers may be giving Fox News viewers a way to justify their belief that Trump did nothing wrong, but Special Counsel Jack Smith isn’t just going to throw his hands up and drop the case. Regardless of what his supporters think, Trump will face accountability for working to overturn the election — that is, unless he wins in 2024 and installs a more sympathetic Justice Department.
