Donald Trump Threatens to Start Election Stealing Claims Again if He Is Charged for Jan 6 Capitol Riots
Donald Trump recently signaled that if he is charged for the January 6 riots, he will undoubtedly use the bogus claims about the stolen, rigged elections. “We’ll have fun on the stand with all of these people that say the Presidential Election wasn’t Rigged and Stollen. THE TRIAL OF THE CENTURY!!!,” the former president said in a post on his Truth Social account on July 26, per Bloomberg.
Trump followed that post with several other all-capital-letter exclamations, “2024 ELECTION INTERFERENCE!!!” “PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT!!!” “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”
Trump, who is running for re-election in 2024, said last week that he had been informed that he is a target in the Justice Department's investigation into efforts to alter election results, implying that federal charges are imminent. Trump is the target of a grand jury examining election-related conduct, according to the letter he got from Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is probing the former president's actions after the election, including the insurgency at the Capitol.
These charges would add to the current FBI investigation being held into Trump's handling of classified information after leaving office.
🔥Donald J Trump: “We’ll have fun on the stand with all of these people that say the Presidential Election wasn’t Rigged and Stollen, The Trial of the Century.” pic.twitter.com/qYeY2MaAbC
— Merissa_Hansen🇺🇸 (@merissahansen17) July 26, 2023
Trump has embraced many untested and disproved conspiracy theories regarding the 2020 election, many of which were denied at the time by Trump-appointed judges and then-US Attorney General Bill Barr. He has maintained that he was the true winner in the 2020 Presidential Elections. Despite the threat of many criminal charges, he enjoys a commanding lead over his Republican opponents for the party's candidacy.
A congressional committee in 2022 highlighted that Trump knew there was no election fraud. Nonetheless, Trump persisted with his claims that the election was rigged, claims that members on the panel said were behind the Capitol riots, in which Trump supporters stormed the building in an attempt to prevent President Joe Biden's victory from being certified, per Al Jazeera.
He’s so irresponsible, he can’t appear on social media, even as a guest. YouTube removes video featuring Trump. They write, “Our team has reviewed your content, and it violates our misinformation policy. Content that advances false claims of the 2020 election is not allowed”. pic.twitter.com/0YiaWmNLm5
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) March 11, 2022
“The election fraud claims were false. Mr. Trump’s closest advisers knew it. Mr Trump knew it,” said Democratic Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren. “That didn’t stop him from pushing the false claims and urging his supporters to ‘fight like hell’, to ‘take back their country’ after he lost the election.”
It seems from this Truth Social post that Trump will use his assertions as a defense in court to show that he did nothing illegal in seeking to keep his job since the whole election was rigged. However, veteran federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade believes such a defense will "come to a screeching halt in court" due to a lack of evidence.
“Trump may try to claim he genuinely believed the election had been stolen as a defense to rebut proof of his intent to defraud, but even there, the evidence that he did know he lost is overwhelming,” McQuade said.
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