Jack Smith uses Trump lawyer’s media statements against him in latest 2020 election case filing

John Lauro outlined a potential defence on TV. Prosecutors say the former president’s legal team should be prepared for a January trial date

Donald Trump’s lead attorney made a series of TV and media appearances in the days after the former president was federally indicted for three criminal conspiracies and the obstruction of the 2020 presidential election.

John Lauro said his client’s alleged actions were protected by the First Amendment. He floated a possible defence strategy in an upcoming trial. And he claimed that the former president, who is accused of committing crimes while in office, is “immune” from the case that federal prosecutors have brought against him.

Those statements have now been quoted by US Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith in his request to a federal judge to set a trial date.

One footnote in the filing notes that “it appears that [the] defense counsel is already planning which motions the defendant will file,” pointing to Mr Lauro’s remarks on CBS News on 6 August. (“[W]e’re going to be identifying and litigating a number of motions that we’re going to file on First Amendment grounds, or the fact that President Trump is immune as president from being prosecuted in this way,” Mr Lauro said at the time.)

The filing also notes that Mr Lauro has claimed that prosecutors have been working on the case for “three and a half years” while the defence is starting from scratch, a claim that is “not only impossible” but “disingenuous,” according to prosecutors. January 6 – when a joint session of Congress was forcibly interrupted by a mob of Mr Trump’s supporters – was less than three years ago.

Prosecutors have made Mr Trump aware of the investigation since at least June 2022, according to the filing. That’s not counting the massive evidence collection operation from the House select committe’s separate investigation into the events surrounding January 6, which came to similar conclusions.

Mr Trump “has a greater and more detailed understanding of the evidence supporting the charges against him at the outset of this criminal case than most defendants, and is ably advised by multiple attorneys, including some who have represented him in this matter for the last year,” the filing states.

The filing also quotes Mr Lauro’s comments to Fox News that the right to a “speedy trial” is solely the defendant’s, a claim that prosecutors rejected. “The right to a timely trial is vested in the public, not just in the defendant,” according to the filing.

Prosecutors have requested a trial to begin on 2 January.

That date “would vindicate the public’s strong interest in a speedy trial – an interest guaranteed by the Constitution and federal law in all cases, but of particular significance here, where the defendant, a former president, is charged with conspiring to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election, obstruct the certification of the election results, and discount citizens’ legitimate vote,” the filing states.

In his TV appearances, Mr Lauro has revived many of the same claims that form the basis of the so-called “independent state legislature” theory rejected by the US Supreme Court earlier this year. He also was criticised for calling an alleged scheme to overturn election results “politics” and characterising Mr Trump’s push for then-Vice President Mike Pence to support the scheme as an “aspirational” request.

Mr Trump continues to cast himself as a victim of political persecution, accusing prosecutors and President Joe Biden of mounting a politically motivated case against him to “interfere” with 2024 elections; Mr Trump, who routinely uses projection as a rhetorical defence, has been accused of mounting his own “election interference” in the detailed indictment against him.

“We know the reason,” Mr Lauro told Fox News host Laura Ingraham.

“I think you’re on to something,” she said. “They want to prevent the people from having their say next year, whatever that say is.”