Trump attorney on new indictment: ‘Political speech now has been criminalized’

John Lauro, an attorney for former President Trump, responded to news that his client was indicted over his attempts to cling to power after the 2020 election by characterizing the charges as an attack on political speech and as an attempt by one party to go after another on politically motivated charges. 

“It’s a terribly tragic day that we find ourselves in, where political speech now has been criminalized, where an existing Justice Department — [Attorney General] Merrick Garland, has a boss. His name is Joe Biden. And Joe Biden is running against Donald Trump,” Lauro said in an interview Tuesday on Fox News with Bret Baier.

“We have the criminalization and the weaponization of public policy and political speech by one political party over another,” he added.

President Biden and Trump are both running for the White House in 2024 and are the clear front-runners in their respective parties. Lauro accused Biden and his administration of acting for political gain. 

“It’s really an astounding document, because for the first time in American history, a former president is being prosecuted by a political opponent — who wields the power of the criminal justice system — for what he believed in and the policies and the political speech that he carried out as president,” he said.

Lauro was asked to respond to the Justice Department’s charge that Trump knew he lost but was “determined to remain in power,” and “spread lies” he knew “were false, created an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger and eroded public faith in the administration of the election.” 

He responded by challenging prosecutors “to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Donald Trump believed that these allegations were false,” adding, “What did he see in real time? He saw changes in election procedure in the middle of the game being carried out by executive-level people at the state level, election officials, but not the state legislatures.” 

Lauro also blamed a “constitutional expert” who he said told the former president that states were “complaining about what happened” and that Trump, as president, had the ability to ask former Vice President Mike Pence “to pause the vote on Jan. 6, have these states audit and recertify, and, that way, we know ultimately who won the election.”

“And that’s the only thing that President Trump suggested,” he said. “There’s nothing unlawful about that. He was entitled to do that, as the chief executive officer carrying out the laws, and nothing about that was obstructive.”