WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for Donald Trump are raising new challenges to the federal election subversion case against him, telling a judge that the indictment should be dismissed because it violates the former president’s free speech rights and represents a vindictive prosecution.
The motions filed late Monday in the case charging the Republican with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost are on top of a pending argument by defense attorneys that he is immune from federal prosecution for actions taken within his official role as president.
Special counsel Jack Smith’s team urged a judge last week to reject that argument and is expected to do the same for the latest motions. It is routine for defendants to ask a judge to dismiss the charges against them, but such requests are rarely granted. In Trump’s case, though, the challenges to the indictment could at a minimum force a delay in a prosecution that is set for trial in Washington next March.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for Donald Trump are raising new challenges to the federal election subversion case against him, telling a judge that the indictment should be dismissed because it violates the former president’s free speech rights and represents a vindictive prosecution.
The motions filed late Monday in the case charging the Republican with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost are on top of a pending argument by defense attorneys that he is immune from federal prosecution for actions taken within his official role as president.
“Under the First Amendment, each individual American participating in a free marketplace of ideas — not the federal Government — decides for him or herself what is true and false on great disputed social and political questions.”
Smith’s team conceded at the outset of the four-count indictment that Trump could indeed lawfully challenge his loss to Democrat Joe Biden but said his actions went far beyond that, including by illegally conspiring to block the official counting of electoral votes by Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, when rioters who supported him stormed the Capitol and caused a violent clash with police and a delay to the proceedings.
They say the Justice Department appointed Smith as special counsel last year as a way to “insulate Biden and his supporters from scrutiny of their obvious and illegal bias.”
In addition, Trump’s lawyers are asking to strike from the indictment references to the pro-Trump mob’s attack on the Capitol because they say prosecutors have not accused the then-president of inciting the riot.
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