By Adam Edelman - NBC News
John Lauro, Donald Trump's lawyer, said Sunday on NBC News that the former president could have committed a "technical violation of the Constitution," but that does not mean he has violated any criminal law in his attempt to reverse the result of the 2020 election, for which he is accused in court.
Lauro outlined during his interview some of the arguments he could use to defend Trump in the trial for the four criminal charges presented last week by the federal grand jury. Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith led the investigation into election interference and into the violent storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021.
John Lauro, August 6, 2023.NBC
Asked about Trump's alleged pressure on former Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the legitimate, democratic outcome of the 2020 election, Lauro said they had only one disagreement on whether a vice president could take constitutional action that could overturn an election.
"A technical violation of the Constitution is not a violation of criminal law," Lauro said, calling it "simply wrong" to suggest that Trump pressured Pence to break the law.
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"To say that contradicts decades of legal statutes," he continued, "these kinds of constitutional and statutory disagreements do not generate criminal charges. [...] One thing Pence has never said is that he thought Trump was acting criminally."
In response to Trump's indictment in this case, Pence said he believes "that anyone who puts himself above the Constitution should never be president of the United States." The former vice president added that Trump surrounded himself after the 2020 election with "nutty lawyers" who only told him what he wanted to hear.
"I was prepared to make sure that we listened to all the arguments and concerns that members of Congress had expressed," Pence said, "but because of the rioting and the claim by the president and his crackpot lawyers that I could overturn the election, the violence that ensued overshadowed all of that."
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Pence elaborated on the issue Sunday during an interview on CBS News: "From some point in mid-December [2020] they started telling him that I had some authority to reject or return votes to the states," he said.
"He didn't have that authority," Pence said, "no vice president in history has exercised that authority and no one should."
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"Trump believed in the bottom of his heart"
In his interview, Lauro claimed that Trump did nothing criminal because he believed he had won the 2020 election, and the charges against him are, in his opinion, a violation of the First Amendment rights of the Constitution to express that opinion.
"Trump believed in his heart of hearts that he had won that election and, like any citizen, had the right to express himself under the First Amendment," Lauro said.
The indictment against Trump recognizes his right to "speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there was a fraud determining the outcome during the election and that he had won." He also had the "right to formally challenge the election results by lawful and appropriate means," according to the indictment, including recount and lawsuits.
But the prosecutor accuses Trump of going further and participating in three criminal conspiracies: one to "defraud America by using dishonesty, fraud and deceit" in order to obstruct the electoral voting process; another to "prevent the procedure of the January 6 Congress in which the results collected from the presidential elections are counted and certified"; and another "against the right to vote and to have votes counted."
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The allegation that Trump used "dishonesty, fraud and deceit" to subvert the 2020 election with "widespread and destabilizing lies about voter fraud" came after an extensive investigation that included testimony from dozens of White House aides and aides.
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The indictment cited notes Pence took in meetings with Trump in which the president pressured him to reject Electoral College votes in several states.
Democratic criticism of Trump's lawyer
Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the committee on the Jan. 6 assault who served as senior director in Trump's second impeachment trial, criticized Lauro's argument as "unhinged" and saying it was "a serious constitutional defense."
"First of all, a technical violation of the Constitution is a violation of the Constitution. The Constitution opposes insurrection in six distinct sections," Raskin told NBC News.
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"Our constitution is designed to stop people from trying to overthrow elections and try to overthrow the government," he said.
There are people who were in jail for several years for falsifying a vote, because they tried to vote illegally once, but he tried to steal the whole election."
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Trump, for his part, said Sunday that he will try to recuse the judge who was assigned to his case and that he will also try to have the trial venue changed, claiming that both the judge and the current location in Washington, D.C., are an injustice.
"There is no way I can have a fair trial with the judge 'assigned' to the ridiculous case of free speech/fair elections," Trump wrote in an all-caps post on his Truth Social platform. "We will immediately ask for the recusal of this judge for very powerful reasons, and the change of venue," he added.