Donald Trump’s legal team recently offered a “remarkable” suggestion as to why the federal 2020 election interference case should be dismissed, a legal expert has said.
On her Civil Discourse blog, Joyce Vance, a former federal prosecutor, reacted to the joint status report submitted on August 30 by special counsel Jack Smith and Trump’s lawyers. It detailed their clashing proposals for how the case should continue.
Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the proceedings, requested a proposed plan in the wake of the landmark Supreme Court decision that granted Trump some presidential immunity for officials acts performed while in office.
Vance said that in their attempts to have the case thrown out entirely, Trump’s lawyers would focus on presidential immunity, including in the “context of the Special Counsel’s allegations about the pressure campaign on Mike Pence.”
On January 6, 2021, Trump allegedly pressured his vice president to not certify the 2020 election results while Pence performed his purely ceremonial role as presiding officer of the Senate.
President Donald Trump, left, and Vice President Mike Pence at a daily briefing of the White House Coronavirus Task Force in Washington, D.C., on April 15, 2020. Trump’s lawyers have argued the former president is immune from prosecution for allegedly trying to persuade Pence not to certify the 2020 election results.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
“In the view of Trump’s lawyers, their client is immune from any prosecution regarding the pressure Trump put on Pence to refuse to certify Joe Biden‘s election,” Vance wrote.
She continued: “In a rather remarkable section of the report, Trump’s lawyers don’t argue that their client didn’t pressure Pence to help Trump steal the election. Instead, Trump’s lawyers just say he’s immune from prosecution for doing it. That could even end up, at least to some extent, once the Supreme Court gets its hands on it, being a winning argument in a court of law.
“But in the court of public opinion, and particularly for voters, the argument that, ‘sure, I pressured Mike Pence to refuse to certify the election for Joe Biden after we lost so we could take over the government anyway’ isn’t exactly a compelling one. And yet, that’s the essence of the position Trump’s lawyers take.”
Newsweek has contacted Trump’s legal team for comment via email.
In their filing, Trump’s lawyers said they may file a motion to dismiss the charges “focused specifically on the Special Counsel’s improper use of allegations” related to Trump’s communications with Pence in the wake of the 2020 election.
“Namely, in Trump, the Supreme Court held that President Trump is ‘at least presumptively immune from prosecution for’ all alleged efforts ‘to pressure the Vice President to take particular acts in connection with his role at the certification proceeding,” they wrote.
Trump’s relationship with his vice president fell apart in the wake of the January 6 attack on the Capitol, after Pence refused to back Trump’s false election fraud claims, insisting he did not have the authority to not certify the results of the 2020 election, which Biden had won.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to four federal charges over his alleged criminal attempt to overturn the 2020 election results and the events that led up to his supporters’ attack on the Capitol.
Smith recently announced a new superseding indictment against Trump. The revised document carries the same four federal charges against the former president, but they have been narrowed to fall in line with the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling.
The revision removed allegations that Trump pressured the Department of Justice in November 2020 and January 2021 to support his claims that the election results were rigged because of widespread voter fraud.
