that the claims of election fraud were, quote, unquote crazy or that he conceded that he had lost, telling mike pence at the time that pence was simply, quote, too honest. that s why you see smigs making this argument. it s why you saw the argument being made in previous opinions that were released even before the justice department was looking into this, that at this point now, very well-known opinion by judge carter in california that said that trump and john eastman were most likely guilty of trying to defraud the american people because they both conceded at various times in correspondence and communications from other people that they realized to some extent the legal argument they were making was not as on firm grounding as they would now like to be arguing. andrew, just to button up this part of the conversation, even bill barr isn t buying the
gathered one of the sites that violent extremists gathered to help plan and execute the violence of january 6th. now what are we seeing on that site again? we re seeing people become very, very extremist and planning and talking about violence against pence, against the prosecutor, against witnesses. it s all coming from and being instigated by trump. there s another thing that will be even more problematic for a judge to deal with, and that s what i m calling pressure by proxy. people like steve bannon and others in the trump circle who aren t necessarily in this court s jurisdiction who are already out there attacking pence. as discovery occurs, if it ever occurs, and all the evidence goes to the trump team and trump sees who is testifying against him, you re going to see this get worse and worse and eventually come right up to and cross the line with the violence, with the proxy, the
to speak about documents that are provided in discovery that don t, at least to the extent they don t contain sensitive information, which as you were just discussing they want to divide define even more narrowly than the government would define that. so i think this first amendment theme is already in just we haven t even been a week since the charges, is a major, major theme of everything they re going to be doing to defend this case. yeah. and to mary s point, and you read between the lines here to get a broader sense of what the defense strategy for trump might be. and it does actually say it here when you look at page 2, maya, this is again trump s team that is writing this. they re making this, and this is what they write. in a trial about first amendment rights the government seeks to restrict first amendment rights. worse, it does so against its administration s primary political opponent during an election season in which the administration, prominent party members and
either they will come on their own steam or they will be given trial subpoenas that will require them to be there. jackie, to pick up on the washington post reporting, it says one trump adviser joked last week, quote, my best friends are lawyers. tell us what s about to unfold for potential campaign staffers who will face the challenge of trump loyalty versus avoiding suspicions from prosecutors. my colleagues have a really great piece about all of the conflicts of interest. after all, the judge in florida did order trump and prosecutors to submit a list of people that they didn t want trump speaking to as a part of the case. they came up with a list of about 84 different people, many of whom actually still continue to work with trump. we obviously know walt nauta, but even his senior communications aide, one of his
with perhaps it resting on trump believing he had the right to say what he said. give us the overall view of what the defense strategy seems to be from lauro making the rounds over the weekend on multiple outlets? i think you laid it out in simplest terms which is the president at the time when he was president believed he had won the election and continues to believe that. it s actually going to be a central tenet of his claims and platform going into 2024, furthering this argument of his false and unsubstantiated claims of a 2020 election. we previously reported at the post a key part of the case that jack smith needs to make is intent. that s why you saw in the indictment so many examples, example after example of trump conceding to some of his top allies and the people around him