He said Trump was being told by people after the 2020 presidential election “that there were problems” with it and “he also saw in real time that the rules were changing without the state legislatures weighing in.”
Donald Trump’s attorney John Lauro has called the latest indictment of the former president “an attack on free speech and political advocacy.”
Lauro in an interview on CNN Tuesday night described the indictment as an effort to criminalise and censor free speech from the former president.
He said it is “an effort to not only criminalize, but also to censor free speech”.
He said Trump was being told by people after the 2020 presidential election “that there were problems” with it and “he also saw in real time that the rules were changing without the state legislatures weighing in.”
He said Trump was relying on the advice of an attorney, John Eastman, ABCNews reports.
Eastman was the architect of a legal strategy aimed at keeping Trump in power.
Lauro said it’s up to the judge to determine how Trump will appear for his Thursday court date, but he will appear either virtually or in person in Washington, according to ABC News.
The indictment filed against Trump details his alleged actions — and, at times, willful lack of action -- surrounding the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.
Trump has been charged by the Justice Department on four counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
The indictment filed Tuesday night is the third criminal case filed against the former president and current frontrunner in the 2024 GOP presidential race.
The 45-page indictment said Trump after his 2020 loss was “determined to remain in power” and perpetrated conspiracies that targeted a “bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.”
Despite Trump’s mounting legal challenges elsewhere, the charges filed Tuesday are the first time the former president is being formally held to account for his actions in the run-up to the violent mob siege of the Capitol. About 1,000 people have been charged in the attack, some serving lengthy sentences.
As rioters ransacked the Capitol and disrupted the certification of the 2020 election results, Trump “repeatedly refused to approve a message” directing them to leave, the indictment alleges.
He allegedly resisted the urgings of Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, and several other top officials.
The indictment accuses Trump and his allies of exploiting the disruption caused by the violence and redoubling their efforts to spread false claims of election fraud.
On the evening of January 6, as the Capitol was being cleared of rioters, Trump and an unnamed co-conspirator in the indictment called lawmakers to try to convince them to delay the certification, the indictment says.
For the third time, Donald Trump is scheduled to appear in a courtroom as a criminal defendant on Thursday before U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington for the charges he faces related to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.