Trump charged in probe of Jan. 6, efforts to overturn 2020 election
A grand jury indicted former president Donald Trump on Tuesday for a raft of alleged crimes in his brazen efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election — the latest legal and political aftershock stemming from the riot at the U.S. Capitol two and a half years ago.
The four-count, 45-page indictment accuses Trump of three distinct conspiracies, charging that he conspired to defraud the U.S., conspired to obstruct an official proceeding and conspired against people’s rights.
“Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power,” the indictment charges, saying Trump unleashed a blizzard of lies about purported mass voter fraud, and then tried to get state, local, and federal officials to act to change the vote results.
“These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false. In fact, the Defendant was notified repeatedly that his claims were untrue — often by the people on whom he relied for candid advice on important matters, and who were best positioned to know the facts — and he deliberately disregarded the truth,” the indictment states. [Continue reading…]
Donald Trump’s attorneys are preparing a legal plan to shovel blame onto the lawyers who aided his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, two sources familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone.
Trump is on the cusp of being indicted over Jan. 6 and its surrounding events, and if the case goes to trial, his current legal team is preparing an “advice of counsel” argument, attempting to pull blame away from the former president for any possible illegal activity. Plans for such a defense have been percolating since last year, the two sources say.
Several lawyers in Trump’s ever-shifting legal orbit spent time both this and last year quietly studying past high-profile cases involving this particular line of defense. The attorneys tried to game out how such an argument would fare in front of a judge or a jury.
In the aftermath of Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, Trump had an armada of lawyers — some officially representing him, and some simply aligned with him — spreading unhinged conspiracy theories and pushing states to reverse the results: Rudy Giuliani. Sidney Powell. John Eastman. The list goes on and on.
The attorneys were acting on Trump’s behalf. But in this legal strategy, Team Trump would argue it was the lawyers leading Trump, rather than the other way around. [Continue reading…]