Posted on 08/02/2023 5:42:44 AM PDT by Red Badger
Legal experts reacted to former President Donald Trump’s third indictment Tuesday, sounding the alarm on how the indictment against his alleged attempt to overturn the 2020 election prosecutes protected speech.
Trump was charged Tuesday with one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States, one count of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, one count of conspiracy against rights and one count of obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, according to the indictment. Legal experts said the charges are built on speech protected by the First Amendment.
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said Smith issued “the first criminal indictment of alleged disinformation.” “If you take a red pen to all of the material presumptively protected by the First Amendment, you can reduce much of the indictment to haiku,” he said. “I felt that the Mar-a-Lago indictment was strong. This is the inverse.”
Turley also said on Fox News the indictment is “unfair at points,” noting that it “quotes Trump in his speech about encouraging people to go to Capitol Hill, but like the January 6th committee, it omits where he says, ‘you should go peacefully.'”
The indictment states that Trump “had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won” but then states he “also pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting election results.”
Lawyer and Townhall columnist Kurt Schlichter called the indictment “45 pages of First Amendment protected activity.” “It’s 45 pages of First Amendment protected activity broken up by four captions listing conspiracy statutes that do not apply,” he tweeted. “It’s not a conspiracy to use free speech and attempt to participate in the political system no matter how badly our garbage elite wants it to be.” (RELATED: ‘Reduces To A Haiku’: Jonathan Turley Says Many Of The Charges In Trump’s Jan. 6 Indictment Are ‘Protected Speech’)
Former New York federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy said Smith had to stretch the statutes to capture Trump’s behavior. “[Smith] has extravagantly stretched these statues in order to try and capture this behavior and that’s because this is a proxy for what should have been a political impeachment process they’re leaving to the criminal justice system, the failure of Congress to carry out a successful impeachment,” McCarthy said.
“If you’ve got evidence that Trump committed incitement, then charge him with incitement,” he continued, adding that they “don’t have a prayer of a case like that.” Constitutional lawyer Robert Barnes tweeted the indictment “threatens core First Amendment freedoms in an unprecedented manner, by making legal advocacy a crime, advocacy to Congress a crime, advocacy to courts a crime, advocacy to the public a crime.”
Smith is a fraud. He had to indict or he would have been loaded down with death threats from his massahs on the far left.
He’s a tool.
Nothing more....................
not sure D’s expect to win in SCourt ultimately in any of the cases - the game is to tie DJT up, bankrupt him, try to get people to give up on him and keep him from upending their corrupt feudal system by occupying WH for second time.it’s our job to get him past ‘GO.’
Bold prediction (that will probably not come true):
Trump’s legal team moves for summary dismissal based on First Amendment grounds, the judge denies the motion, Trump appeals directly to the Supreme Court (who has appellate jurisdiction on DC District court) and the denial for summary dismissal gets overturned 9-0, resulting in the dismissal of all charges in this case.
The chilling effect on political speech that this prosecution would have is a bridge too far for even Trump-hating liberals.
Trump’s lawyer vows to use new charges to ‘re-litigate every single issue’ of the 2020 election.
An attorney who is representing former President Donald Trump in his latest federal criminal indictment vowed to use the charges to “re-litigate every single issue in the 2020 election in the context of this litigation.”
The case gives Trump “an opportunity that he has never had before, which is to have subpoena power since January 6 in a way that can be exercised in federal court,” attorney John Lauro said in a Fox News interview.
Trump is charged with conspiring to overturn his election loss in the 2020 presidential race by pushing fraud claims he knew were false, which prosecutors say amounted to an effort to obstruct the electoral process.
Lauro’s comments suggest that the former president’s legal strategy in this case could include an attempt by his lawyers to portray Trump’s myriad false claims of widespread election fraud in late 2020 as legitimate concerns at the time, regardless of whether or not they were correct.
— Kevin Breuninger
Didn’t Hillary’s people actually pressure electors to change their vote from Trump to her in 2016? I even seem to remember a few of the more zealous ones threatening electors who didn’t. Was her constant bitching about fraud and Russian collusion not incitement?
Things got hot for Hunter.
So the government had to rush out an indictment of Trump to make it seem like he was the bad guy.
They rushed out a laughable indictment.
And they will probably rush out another one in a few weeks as Hunter’s legal trouble continues to mount.
Seems to me that Trump or a PAC should create an ad with the pertinent part of the speech. Run that on every leftist outlet there is. There’s another 3 point jump in the polls. It would be more but too many people have been conditioned to not believe their eyes.
It’s in DC, they’ll convict.
While that may be true, the DC jury will have a composite IQ of a glass of cold water and will convict Trump for whatever they are told to do.
Never forget that a jury is composed of people that are too dumb to get out of jury duty.................
The DC jury will have a composite IQ of a glass of cold water and will convict Trump for whatever they are told to do.
Never forget that a jury is composed of people that are too dumb to get out of jury duty.................
I think it has a major Article II problem, as well.
It doesn’t matter other than for scheduling and sentencing. A DC jury will be stocked full of hardcore communists who will be ready to convict as soon as they’re selected. It will probably get turned over on appeal to SCOTUS, but who knows how the process and timing will shake out over the next year. I expect this judge to move the case through as quickly as possible in order to get Trump behind bars in the middle of campaign season.
DC democrats don’t ‘get it’... the world outside of DC reacts to all of this very differently than they do. Going after Trump on ‘thought crimes’ is insane.
If the indictment is based on his issuing false statements, then his defense is obviously to go to court and prove his statements were not false and had merit. In a fair legal system, he would be given the chance to provide proof to that effect by using subpoena power and by calling witnesses. We’ll see if he’s allowed to do either. It will tell us a lot about what kind if a country we live in.
A real great combination: Smith is a low IQ, high achiever who has been a loser in his law career and Judge Chutkan who is another low IQ achiever who is looking for higher levels in her career by using Trump as a stepping stone.
The constitution will be a problem to the left? Um doubtful- they ignore the constitution.
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