{"id":2971,"date":"2024-10-17T05:19:27","date_gmt":"2024-10-17T05:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/judge-in-trumps-jan-6-case-rejects-strained-argument-about-his-false-2020-election-claims\/"},"modified":"2024-10-17T05:19:27","modified_gmt":"2024-10-17T05:19:27","slug":"judge-in-trumps-jan-6-case-rejects-strained-argument-about-his-false-2020-election-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/hi\/judge-in-trumps-jan-6-case-rejects-strained-argument-about-his-false-2020-election-claims\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge in Trump’s Jan. 6 case rejects ‘strained’ argument about his false 2020 election claims"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 A judge overseeing the federal election interference case against Donald Trump on Wednesday rejected the former president\u2019s claim that he was actually concerned about foreign influence and interference in the 2020 election \u2014 rather than the false claims about domestic voter fraud that he repeated in the weeks before the Jan. 6 attack. <\/p>\n

There is \u201cno reason to believe\u201d that Trump\u2019s purported worries about foreign influence in the 2020 election \u201canimated his concerns at the time,\u201d Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote, adding that Trump\u2019s theories that such evidence would be relevant to his criminal case \u201cdo not withstand scrutiny.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s team had asked Chutkan to compel prosecutors in special counsel Jack Smith\u2019s office to provide them with additional evidence, including \u201call information\u201d about foreign interference and influence efforts in the 2020 election. It\u2019s part of the Trump team\u2019s attempt to present Trump\u2019s concerns about mass voter fraud \u2014 which were roundly rejected by independent arbiters and courts \u2014 as \u201creasonable\u201d and grounded in reality.<\/p>\n

The defense has maintained that Trump\u2019s false election fraud claims \u201cwere plausible and maintained in good faith\u201d and \u201cnot unreasonable at the time<\/a>,\u201d even though many Jan. 6 defendants have since lamented that they were gullible enough to believe Trump\u2019s lies<\/a>, like Trump\u2019s false claim on Jan. 6 that 139% of voters had cast ballot<\/a>s in the majority-Black city of Detroit.<\/p>\n

Chutkan pushed back on Trump\u2019s claims Wednesday in an order<\/a> that rejected all but three of his 14 categories of requests for additional evidence.<\/p>\n

About his request for evidence on foreign interference, Chutkan noted that the claims of election fraud Trump made as part of the alleged criminal conspiracy were \u201ctotally unrelated to foreign cyberattacks,\u201d pointing to language in the superseding indictment<\/a> that states that Trump\u2019s allegations of fraud revolved around his false claims that \u201clarge numbers of dead, non-resident, non-citizen, or otherwise ineligible voters had cast ballots, or that voting machines had changed votes.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cAt best, then, Defendant might attempt to use information about these network breaches to argue that because of generic foreign cyberattacks unrelated to election results, he had reason to worry that foreign adversaries would\u00a0interfere in the 2020 election, which in turn somehow gave him a good-faith basis to claim that domestic<\/em> actors had perpetrated outcome-determinative election fraud in non-cyberattack<\/em> forms,\u201d Chutkan wrote. \u201cThat logic is too strained to meet Defendant\u2019s burden.\u201d<\/p>\n

A federal grand jury returned a superseding indictment in August charging that Trump schemed to use a campaign of \u201cunsupported, objectively unreasonable, and ever-changing<\/a>\u201d claims of voter fraud to overturn his election loss and maintain the presidency. <\/p>\n

Trump has pleaded not guilty to the four charges against him: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding and conspiracy against rights.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s state of mind is essential to the case, and Smith\u2019s team has alleged that Trump \u201cknew\u201d his election lies \u201cwere false.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chutkan also rejected Trump\u2019s request for evidence on \u201cundercover agents and individuals acting at the direction of official authorities at the Capitol on January 6,\u201d a request that aligns with the false-flag narrative<\/a> promoted by some conspiracy theorists \u2014 including some Republican members of Congress<\/a> \u2014 about Jan. 6.<\/p>\n

Trump, she wrote, \u201cdoes not provide anything more than speculation that there even were any such undercover actors at the Capitol on January 6\u201d and there was no reason to compel the government to search for and produce that information.<\/p>\n

Chutkan also rejected Trump\u2019s request for communications by \u201cmembers, relatives, or associates of the Biden Administration,\u201d saying the \u201csweepingly broad and undefined\u201d request \u201cutterly fails\u201d to meet the rigorous standard required for Trump to be able to make a selective prosecution claim.<\/p>\n

The judge said that Trump was entitled to three categories of information: materials reviewed by former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe before his interview with the government; records about security measures that were conveyed to Trump during a meeting with Gen. Mark Milley, then chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff, and acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller; and evidence related to the unauthorized retention of classified documents by former Vice President Mike Pence, which Trump\u2019s team could use to potentially undermine Pence\u2019s credibility if he were to testify. The Justice Department declined<\/a> to press charges against Pence in the classified documents case.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court gutted part of Smith\u2019s case over the summer with its ruling<\/a> on presidential immunity, but the case against Trump is \u2014 very slowly \u2014 churning toward a potential trial. The likelihood of the case going to trial plummets if Trump wins re-election; he is widely expected to replace Attorney General Merrick Garland with a loyalist who could dismiss the case.<\/p>\n

Earlier in the day, Smith\u2019s team submitted a filing arguing that Trump bears responsibility for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol<\/a>, saying Trump \u201cwillfully caused his supporters to obstruct and attempt to obstruct\u201d the certification of President Joe Biden\u2019s 2020 presidential victory.<\/p>\n

In a statement earlier Wednesday, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said that \u201cCrazed Liberals throughout the Deep State are freaking out\u201d at Trump\u2019s standing in the 2024 race, and that \u201cthis entire case is a sham and a partisan, Unconstitutional Witch Hunt that should be dismissed entirely.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"1\"<\/picture><\/a><\/div>\n

Ryan J. Reilly<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Ryan J. Reilly is a justice reporter for NBC News.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 A judge overseeing the federal election interference case against Donald Trump on Wednesday rejected the former president’s claim that he was actually concerned about foreign influence and interference in the 2020 election \u2014 rather than the false claims about domestic voter fraud that he repeated in the weeks before the Jan. 6 attack.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2972,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2185],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trump-election-news"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com\/image\/upload\/t_nbcnews-fp-1200-630,f_auto,q_auto:best\/rockcms\/2024-10\/241016-donald-trump-se-215p-e632ee.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nine9ja.com\/hi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}