An attorney for former President Donald Trump said Thursday that Trump’s defense will use a “very simple” strategy should charges over the 2020 election be brought to trial.
Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges during his Thursday arraignment after Special Counsel Jack Smith secured a four-count indictment of Trump relating to his efforts to contest the results of the 2020 election. Smith previously secured a 37-count indictment against Trump in June based on an investigation into allegations surrounding classified documents. (RELATED: ‘Reduces To A Haiku’: Jonathan Turley Says Many Of The Charges In Trump’s Jan. 6 Indictment Are ‘Protected Speech’)
“The legal strategy in this case I think is very simple: You attack the facts that Jack Smith put out that are wrong for instance, Jack Smith claiming, as you already pointed out, that Donald Trump did anything other than call for peace and patriotism on January 6th is wrong,” attorney Jesse Binnall told Fox News host Jesse Watters Thursday evening. “And then you attack the law, because Jack Smith has the entire law in this case wrong, and more importantly, he is ignoring the Constitution of the United States.”
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“Here is how: The First Amendment gives you the right to speech, something that Jack Smith’s prosecutors are completely ignoring, but more than that, it also gives you the right to petition Congress for redress of grievances,” Binnall continued. “And in this case, when you are saying there was fraud in the election, there are problems in the election and we think you should seat electors X, instead of electors Y, that’s why the first petition clause clearly protects.”
Legal experts noted that much of the conduct Smith claimed was criminal in the indictment appeared to be protected by the First Amendment. Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz said that the indictment not only attacked the First Amendment, but also Trump’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel.
“Jack Smith is terrified that Donald Trump is going to be elected again because Jack Smith is actually the one terrified of democracy because democracy would bring accountability for him and quite honestly his out-of-control prosecutors in an out of control Justice Department,” Binnall added.
Trump’s top rivals for the Republican nomination for president in 2024, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, all condemned the indictment.
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