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      Georgia DA summons former lawmaker and journalist in Trump election inquiry

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      The office of the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, has issued summonses to former Georgia lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan and journalist George Chidi to testify before a grand jury on Tuesday regarding Donald Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in that state.The announcement of the summonses confirmed previous reporting by the Guardian that Willis’s office in Atlanta on Tuesday would present evidence to a grand jury weighing charges against the former president. Prosecutors could ask the grand jury to hand up charges on Tuesday as well, having completed an internal review of evidence in the case weeks ago.“I can confirm that I have been requested to testify before the Fulton county grand jury on Tuesday. I look forward to answering their questions around the 2020 election,” Duncan tweeted on Saturday.He added: “Republicans should never let honesty be mistaken for weakness.”Speaking to CNN, Duncan said that he has “no expectations as to the questions, and I’ll certainly answer whatever questions are put in front of me”.Similarly, Chidi wrote: “I’ve just received a call from district attorney Fani Willis’s office. I have been asked to come to court Tuesday for testimony before the grand jury.”In recent weeks, Willis’s office has considered several potential statutes under which to charge the former president and affiliated operatives, including solicitation to commit election fraud and conspiracy to commit election fraud, sources familiar with the matter have told the Guardian.Other state election law charges that have been under consideration include solicitation of a public or political officer to fail to perform their duties and solicitation to destroy, deface or remove ballots, sources said.They also added that Willis is looking to charge certain Trump operatives who were involved in accessing voting machines and copying sensitive election data in Georgia’s Coffee county in January 2021 with computer trespass crimes.Last month, sources familiar with the nearly three-year investigation into the former president told the Guardian that Willis has evidence to pursue a racketeering indictment predicated on statutes related to influencing witnesses and computer trespass.The sprawling investigation began after Trump placed a phone call to the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, on 2 January 2021 and pressured him to “find 11,780 votes” in the state which his Democratic rival Joe Biden ultimately won on his way to clinching the presidency.“The people of Georgia are angry, the people in the country are angry,” Trump can be heard saying in a recording. “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated … So what are we going to do here, folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAn indictment could come soon after the grand jury hears the case and in turn constitute a fourth active criminal case against Trump, who’s been facing mounting legal woes since April.The former president is already facing federal criminal conspiracy charges related to purported attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat and his alleged encouragement of the January 6 US Capitol attack.Additionally, New York state prosecutors filed charges against him related to hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.The ex-president is also facing a separate federal indictment pertaining to his alleged illegal hoarding of government secrets at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after his presidency.Trump has pleaded not guilty to all the cases against him and denies wrongdoing. More

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      Inflammatory remarks could speed up 2020 election trial, judge warns Trump

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      The federal judge presiding over Donald Trump’s 2020 election subversion case on Friday warned inflammatory remarks from the former president would push her to schedule the trial sooner, saying she would take every step to safeguard the integrity of proceedings and to avoid tainting the potential jury pool.The admonition came as the US district court judge Tanya Chutkan ruled on Trump’s requests to have fewer restrictions in a protective order that will govern what evidence turned over to his lawyers in the discovery process the former president could share publicly.Broadly speaking, Chutkan ruled that Trump was free to share “non-sensitive materials” as designated by prosecutors, but narrowed the scope so closely that it could ultimately amount to only a pyrrhic victory. Chutkan also ended up rejecting the majority of Trump’s other requests.The judge repeatedly emphasized that she would not take into account Trump’s presidential campaign, telling Trump’s lead lawyer John Lauro that the former president’s free speech rights were not absolute and that they came second to the fact that he is now a criminal defendant.“What the effects of my order are on a political campaign are not going to influence my decision. This is a criminal trial,” Chutkan said. “The defendant’s desire to conduct a campaign, to respond to political opponents, has to yield.”Trump has characterized the indictment, charging him with four felonies over his attempt to obstruct the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election win on 6 January 2021 and to overturn the results of the 2020 election, as a political witch-hunt and infringing on his first amendment rights.To that end, his lawyers had filed a 29-page brief before the hearing asking the judge to issue a less restrictive protective order, a routine step in criminal cases to ensure evidence turned over to defendants in discovery is used to help construct a defense but not chill witnesses.Trump’s legal team had asked for various accommodations, such as giving Trump the ability to make public any transcripts of witness interviews that are not protected by grand jury secrecy rules and to expand the circle of people who could gain access to the discovery material.Prosecutors in the office of special counsel Jack Smith had asked to impose a protective order almost immediately after Trump was arraigned last week, specifically referencing a vaguely threatening post from Trump that read: “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!”The prosecutors did not ask the judge to impose a gag order on Trump to prevent him from discussing the case, but made an inferential argument that there needed to be clear rules on how Trump could publicly use evidence turned over to him in discovery.The judge was skeptical of the government’s argument that even non-sensitive materials should be subject to the protective order, saying Trump was prohibited from intimidating witnesses as a condition of his pre-trial release, and agreed to limit the scope of the order.But Chutkan was unimpressed by the attempt of Trump’s lawyers to designate witness deposition transcripts and recordings as “non-sensitive” and rejected that request, which will dramatically reduce the volume of records that Trump could discuss publicly.The judge also refused to allow yet-unnamed volunteer attorneys or consultants working for Trump to view the discovery material, saying the request from Trump’s lawyers was so broad that it could “include just about anyone” including potential “unindicted co-conspirators”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The definition you have currently is simply too broad,” Chutkan told Trump’s lawyers. “It allows just about anybody. You know, I live in Washington, anyone is a consultant.”Chutkan ruled that Trump would be allowed to review the discovery materials without needing his lawyers there with him every time, seemingly sympathetic to the plea from Trump’s lawyer John Lauro that “babysitting” his client while he read transcripts was not practical.The judge, however, imposed caveats after prosecutor Thomas Windom raised concerns that Trump might try to copy sensitive discovery materials if left alone with them. “He has shown a tendency to desire to hold on to material he knows he should not have,” Windom quipped.Chutkan’s final decision was to allow Trump to review the discovery materials alone so long as he did not carry electronic devices that could replicate the records. She also ruled that Trump could take notes, but that his lawyers needed to review them to ensure it did not include “sensitive” content.The judge also made clear that the moment Trump took a break from looking at the the discovery materials, his lawyers needed to regain custody of them from Trump. “Certainly he can’t carry them around with him,” Chutkan said.Trump was represented in court by Lauro, a former federal prosecutor, his law firm partner Gregory Singer, and Todd Blanche. Afterwards, Lauro declined to comment on the hearing. The government was represented in court by prosecutors Windom and Molly Gaston. More

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      Trump allies face potential charges in Georgia over voting machine breaches

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      The Fulton county district attorney investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia has evidence to charge multiple allies of the former president involved in breaching voting machines in the state, according to two people briefed on the matter.The potential charges at issue are computer trespass felonies, the people said, though the final list of defendants and whether they will be brought as part of a racketeering case when prosecutors are expected to present evidence to the grand jury next week remain unclear.To bring a racketeering case under Georgia state law, prosecutors need to show the existence of an “enterprise” predicated on at least two “qualifying” crimes, of which computer trespass is one. The Guardian has reported that prosecutors believe they have sufficient evidence for a racketeering case.The statute itself prohibits the intentional use of a computer or computer network without authorization in order to remove data, either temporarily or permanently. It also prohibits interrupting or interfering with the use of a computer, as well as altering or damaging a computer.Prosecutors have taken a special interest in the breach of voting machines in Coffee county, Georgia, by Trump allies because of the brazen nature of the operation and the possibility that Trump was aware that his allies intended to covertly gain access to the machines.In a series of particularly notable incidents, forensics experts hired by Trump allies copied data from virtually every part of the voting system, which is used statewide in Georgia, before uploading them to a password-protected website that could be accessed by 2020 election deniers.The story about how a group of Trump allies gained unauthorized access to voting machines – informed by deposition transcripts, surveillance tapes and other records – can be traced back to 2020, when the top elections supervisor for Coffee county came across the “adjudication” system for mail ballots within the machines.A spokesperson for the Fulton county district attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment.In Georgia, mail ballots are marked by hand. If a ballot cannot be read by the machine, because of stray marks or other errors, it goes through an adjudication process whereby a bipartisan panel reviews the ballot and agrees on the voter’s intention before telling the machine how to count it.The adjudication process became a point of controversy in local Republican party circles after the elections supervisor, Misty Hampton, said in a viral November 2020 video that the person entering the information could theoretically tell it to falsely count a ballot intended for one candidate for another.Swapping a vote through the adjudication process would be straightforwardly illegal, and there is no evidence that such conduct took place during the 2020 presidential election. If it had, it would have been detected during the subsequent statewide hand count, experts have said.On 5 January 2021, Georgia held runoff elections for the state’s two US Senate seats. That day, amid a fraught atmosphere, the Coffee county GOP chair, Cathy Latham, was the Republican member on the bipartisan adjudication panel.As Latham later recounted in depositions in a long-running lawsuit brought by the Coalition for Good Governance, the ballot scanner in Coffee county repeatedly jammed as it tried to read mail-in ballots. And in Latham’s retelling, it appeared to jam more often for ballots marked for Republican candidates.When Latham complained, the on-site Dominion Voting System technician advised her to wipe the ballot scanner with a cloth. Latham said in her statement that the wiping did not work, and it was only after the technician held his phone near the scanner that the problems were resolved.According to Latham’s account, the suspicion was that the technician had downloaded something to the ballot scanner through his phone.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThere remains no such evidence to date and the Georgia secretary of state’s office has affirmed the scanners have no wireless capability. But that bizarre episode appears to have been the trigger for a number of Trump allies to see if someone could have manipulated the election.The day after the Capitol attack in Washington, on 7 January 2021, surveillance video picked up Eric Chaney, a member of the Coffee county elections board, arriving at the county’s elections office around 11am. Latham also arrived at the office around an hour later.The tapes then show Latham greeting data experts from SullivanStrickler, a firm that specializes in “imaging”, or making exact copies, of electronic devices, and Scott Hall, a bail bond business owner with ties to the local Republican party hunting for evidence of election fraud.What happened inside the elections office is only partially captured on surveillance video, but records show the SullivanStrickler team imaged almost every component of the election systems, including ballot scanners, the server used to count votes, thumb drives and flash memory cards.The company believed it had authorization to collect the data, SullivanStrickler’s director of data risk Dean Felicetti later said in a deposition, and suggested that Hampton and Latham had given their approval.Most of the imaging work apparently took place off camera, though tapes from the lobby of the Coffee county elections office show Latham, Hampton and Chaney with the SullivanStrickler experts as they bend over to look at computer screens and walk around elections equipment.Lawyers for Latham and Hampton did not respond to requests for comment. But Latham’s previous lawyer has told the Washington Post that she did not authorize the copying and had “not acted improperly or illegally”. Hall and Chaney also did not respond to requests for comment.The next day, according to text messages, Trump lawyer Sidney Powell – who helped organize the clandestine operation and paid for it through her non-profit – was informed that SullivanStrickler would post the data it had gathered on to a password-protected site from where it could be downloaded.Breaches of the Coffee county voting machines appear to have happened at least two additional times. On 18 January 2021, they were accessed on a second occasion when Hampton arrived with Doug Logan, the CEO of elections security firm CyberNinjas, and a retired federal employee named Jeffrey Lenberg.The pair spent at least four hours that afternoon inside the elections office, and then returned the following day for another nine hours. Lenberg then again gained access to the elections office every day for four days starting on 25 January 2021.What Lenberg did inside remains uncertain. But in a subsequent podcast interview, Lenberg said he and Logan went to Coffee county after hearing about the Senate runoffs incident because they wanted to see if they could replicate the error but “didn’t touch” the machines themselves. More

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      Special counsel proposes January 2024 trial date in Trump election case

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      Federal prosecutors asked the judge overseeing the criminal case against Donald Trump over his efforts to subvert the 2020 election to schedule the trial for the start of January 2024, saying there was a significant public interest in expediting the prosecution.The written filing from prosecutors in the office of the special counsel Jack Smith set an aggressive timetable that Trump’s lawyers are expected to seek to substantially delay, according to a person close to the former president.“A January 2 trial date would vindicate the public’s strong interest in a speedy trial,” prosecutors wrote. “It is difficult to imagine a public interest stronger than the one in this case in which the defendant – the former president of the United States – is charged with three criminal conspiracies.”The eight-page filing submitted to the US district court judge Tanya Chutkan, who will hear arguments from both sides about the scope of the protective order in the case on Friday, argued it gave sufficient time to Trump to prepare a defense.Last week, Trump pleaded not guilty to charges filed in federal district court in Washington that he conspired to defraud the United States, conspired to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructed an official proceeding and engaged in a conspiracy against rights.Among other things, the government said Trump’s legal team already appeared to know what arguments they intended to make at trial and what pre-trial motions they intended to file, and therefore were in a position to quickly go to trial.The prosecutors, for instance, sought to use the television appearances from Trump’s lawyer John Lauro – in which he discussed potential legal defenses and the possibility of filing a motion to change the trial venue to West Virginia – against him.“It appears that defense counsel is already planning which motions the defendant will file,” prosecutors said in one footnote. “On CBS’s Face the Nation on August 6, 2023, Mr Lauro stated, ‘We’re going to be identifying and litigating a number of motions that we’re going to file.’”The government also noted that Trump’s legal team had known about the facts of the case for at least a year after prosecutors first contacted them in June 2022, and one of the lawyers involved in that initial outreach, presumably Evan Corcoran, was at Trump’s arraignment.It also argued that Trump’s lawyers were wrong to characterize the Speedy Trial Act, which broadly mandates criminal cases to go to trial promptly, as existing for the benefit of the defendant and therefore allowing Trump to seek delays if he chooses.The speedy trial rules in fact exist to protect the rights of the public as well as the defendant, prosecutors wrote, citing an opinion from United States v Gambino that found: “The public is the loser when a criminal trial is not prosecuted expeditiously, as suggested by the aphorism, ‘justice delayed is justice denied’.”But the draft schedule proposed by the government, that would see evidence turned over to Trump through discovery completed by the end of August and jury selection at the start of December, is almost certain to be delayed because of complicating factors.The prosecution unexpectedly disclosed in a footnote that they intended to use classified information at trial, which means his case will be tried according to the time-consuming steps laid out in the Classified Information Procedures Act, or Cipa.Cipa essentially requires the defense to disclose what classified information they want to use at trial in advance, so the courts can decide whether to add restrictions. If the government feels the restrictions aren’t enough, they can decide whether they still want to continue with the case.While Cipa established a mechanism through which the government can safely charge cases involving classified documents, the series of steps that have to be followed means it takes longer to get to trial compared with regular criminal cases without national security implications. More

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      US special counsel obtained search warrant for Trump’s Twitter account

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      The US special counsel who is investigating Donald Trump obtained a search warrant for the former president’s Twitter account, and the social media platform delayed complying, a court filing on Wednesday showed.The delay in compliance prompted a federal judge to hold Twitter in contempt and fine it $350,000, the filing showed.The filing says the team of US special counsel Jack Smith obtained a search warrant in January directing Twitter, which recently rebranded to X, to produce “data and records” related to Trump’s Twitter account as well as a non-disclosure agreement prohibiting Twitter from disclosing the search warrant.The filing says prosecutors got the search warrant after a court “found probable cause to search the Twitter account for evidence of criminal offenses”. The court found that disclosing the warrant could risk that Trump would “would seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation” by giving him “an opportunity to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior”, according to the filing.It’s unclear what information Smith may have sought from Trump’s Twitter account. Possibilities include data about when and where the posts were written, their engagement and the identities of other accounts that reposted Trump’s content.Twitter objected to the non-disclosure agreement, saying four days after the compliance deadline that it would not produce any of the account information, according to the ruling. The judges wrote that Twitter “did not question the validity of the search warrant” but argued that the non-disclosure agreement was a violation of the first amendment and wanted the court to assess the legality of the agreement before it handed any information over.The warrant ordered Twitter to provide the records by 27 January. A judge found Twitter to be in contempt after a court hearing on 7 February, but gave the company an opportunity to hand over the documents by 5pm that evening. Twitter, however, only turned over some records that day. It didn’t fully comply with the order until 9 February, the ruling says. The delay in compliance prompted the court to Twitter in contempt, and on Wednesday, the federal court in Washington upheld that decision.Smith has charged Trump over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in an attempt to stay in power in a criminal indictment unsealed last week.Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges, which include conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding and conspiracy against rights.Trump says he is innocent and has portrayed the investigation as politically motivated. His legal team has indicated it will argue that Trump was relying on the advice of lawyers around him in 2020 and had the right to challenge an election he believed was rigged.Trump had been a prolific user of Twitter, both before and during his presidency. Amassing more than 88 million followers, he used the platform to attack opponents, promote racist ideology, encourage violence against journalists, and even threaten nuclear war.Trump was banned from the platform following the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the Capitol for inciting violence.Trump’s account was reinstated in November 2022, following Tesla billionaire Elon Musk’s takeover of the platform. The decision was condemned by online safety and civil rights advocates who say Trump’s online presence has created risks of real-world violence.Trump has yet to tweet after being allowed back on to Twitter, preferring his own platform, Truth Social. His campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the former president posted to Truth Social on Wednesday that the Justice Department “secretly attacked” his Twitter account, and he characterized the investigation as an attempt to “infringe” on his bid to reclaim the White House in 2024.Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      Nancy Pelosi calls indictments against Trump ‘beautiful and intricate’

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      Indictments of Donald Trump regarding his attempt to overturn the 2020 election and his retention of classified information are “exquisite … beautiful and intricate”, the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi said.“The indictments against the president are exquisite,” Pelosi, 83 and a regular antagonist of the 77-year-old former president, told New York magazine in an interview published on Monday.“They’re beautiful and intricate, and they probably have a better chance of conviction than anything that I would come up with.”Pelosi’s words to New York magazine seemed likely to prompt a response from Trump, with whom she frequently clashed when she was speaker and he was in the Oval Office. In one high-profile incident, in February 2020, Pelosi famously tore up a Trump speech, after his State of the Union address.Pelosi also told the magazine that if Trump were to win the Republican nomination and the 2024 election against Joe Biden, “it would be a criminal enterprise in the White House”.“Don’t even think of that,” she said. “Don’t think of the world being on fire. It cannot happen, or we will not be the United States of America.”Despite 78 criminal indictments in total, including 34 over his hush-money payments to a porn star, and the likelihood of more over his election subversion in Georgia, Trump is the clear frontrunner in the Republican primary.Denying wrongdoing and claiming political persecution, he enjoys a 30-plus point lead in national averages and clear advantages in early voting states.In general election polling, he generally leads Biden.Pelosi also oversaw two impeachments of Trump and the House committee that investigated the January 6 insurrection.Stepping down as speaker but remaining in Congress, she has not let up on Trump.Last week, the California congresswoman told MSNBC that Trump looked like a “scared puppy” when he arrived in court in Washington to face four charges related to his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.Trump, who has called Pelosi “crazy” and an “animal”, denied being scared.In a characteristically extreme response, he also called the former speaker “really quite vicious … a Wicked Witch … a sick and demented psycho who will someday live in HELL!”Speaking to New York magazine, Pelosi called Trump’s Washington arraignment a “triumph for the truth”.She would not predict if Trump would be convicted. But she also said: “When we saw what he did on January 6, I knew that was a crime … I know he committed a crime that day.” More

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      Prosecutors may not need to show that Trump knew he had lost the election

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      Included in the indictment last week against Donald Trump for his efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election was a count of obstructing an official proceeding – the attempt to stop the vote certification in Congress on the day his supporters mounted the January 6 Capitol attack.The count is notable, because – based on a review of previous judicial rulings in other cases where the charge has been brought – it may be one where prosecutors will not need to prove Trump knew he lost the election, as the former president’s legal team has repeatedly claimed.The obstruction of an official proceeding statute has four parts, but in Trump’s case what is at issue is the final element: whether the defendant acted corruptly.The definition of “corruptly” is currently under review by the US court of appeals for the DC circuit in the case titled United States v Robertson. Yet previous rulings by district court judges and a different three-judge panel in the DC circuit in an earlier case suggest how it will apply to Trump.In short: even with the most conservative interpretation, prosecutors at trial may not need to show that Trump knew his lies about 2020 election fraud to be false, or that the ex-president knew he had lost to Joe Biden.“There’s no need to prove that Trump knew he lost the election to establish corrupt intent,” said Norman Eisen, special counsel to the House judiciary committee in the first Trump impeachment.“The benefit under the statute is the presidency itself – and Trump clearly knew that without his unlawful actions, Congress was going to certify Biden as the winner of the election. That’s all the corrupt intent you need,” Eisen said.According to the 45-page indictment, prosecutors in the office of special counsel Jack Smith have evidence that Trump knew of the significance of impeding the vote certification when he pressured his vice-president, Mike Pence, to interfere, saying he otherwise could not remain president.Trump plainly attempted to obstruct the vote certification that would have affirmed Biden’s election win, the indictment shows, as he implored Pence to accept the fake slates of Trump electors from battleground states and delay proceedings, or reject the Biden slates entirely.Trump also took steps he knew would impede proceedings, the indictment shows, when he called senators seeking further delay after the certification was interrupted by the riot, and when he later refused a plea from the White House counsel to “allow the certification”.Trump and his allies have suggested he tried to stop the vote certification because he genuinely believed the 2020 election was stolen, and that prosecutors would have to prove Trump did not believe the claims. But that may not be necessary.Last month, US district court judge Royce Lamberth wrote an opinion in the conviction of January 6 riot defendant Alan Hostetter in which he made it clear that Hostetter’s belief about a stolen 2020 election was not a defense to the “corruptly” element to the obstruction charge.“Even if Mr Hostetter genuinely believed the election was stolen and that public officials had committed treason, that does not change the fact that he acted corruptly with consciousness of wrongdoing,” Lamberth wrote. “Belief in the greater good does not negate consciousness of wrongdoing.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLamberth took into account the fact that Hostetter was “actively cheering on rioters” as the Capitol attack unfolded. The Trump indictment had a parallel, when prosecutors described the former president as having “exploited the disruption” when violence ensued.Those reasonings could be applied to Trump, legal experts said, especially because Lamberth also found that Hostetter had satisfied the stricter interpretation of “corruptly” to mean “unlawful benefit”, as suggested in April in an opinion from DC circuit judge Justin Walker.The interpretation by Walker would not be a material difference to Lamberth’s opinion, the experts said, because prosecutors could simply argue Trump gained a benefit he was not otherwise entitled to: still being president because Congress had not announced Biden as the next president.Coming in the same case as Walker’s opinion was a dissent from DC circuit judge Gregory Katsas, another Trump appointee, who thought the “corruptly” element should mean a defendant sought “an unlawful financial, professional, or exculpatory advantage”.The interpretation by Katsas should not discourage prosecutors, the experts said, because Trump could still be argued to have gained a professional advantage through the obstruction, namely he would have remained president.It was not clear when the three-judge panel in the Robertson case – composed of Bush-appointed Karen Henderson, Obama-appointed Cornelia Pillard and Biden-appointed Florence Pan – will issue a ruling on the definition of “corruptly”, after it heard arguments in the case on 11 May. More

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      Pence would be ‘best witness’ in Trump election conspiracy trial, attorney says

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      Donald Trump’s attorney has suggested that Mike Pence could help his former boss fight off the 2020 election-related criminal conspiracy charges against Trump, claiming that the former vice-president would be the “best witness” for the defence.In an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, attorney John Lauro played down differences between the former president and Pence’s accounts of what happened in the run up to the January 6 2021 certification of Joe Biden’s victory over Trump, whose supporters attacked the US Capitol that day.Asked on Face the Nation whether he feared that Pence would be called as a prosecution witness in the case, Lauro said: “No, no in fact, the vice-president will be our best witness.“There was a constitutional disagreement between the vice-president [Pence] and president Trump, but the bottom line is never, never in our country’s history, as those kinds of disagreements have been prosecuted criminally. It’s unheard of.”Earlier on Sunday, Pence – who is running against Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination – told CBS that he had “no plans” to testify for the prosecution. But he did not rule it out. In response to Lauro’s assertion last week that all Trump did was ask him to pause the certification, Pence said: “That’s not what happened.”Trump, the leading Republican contender in the 2024 presidential race, last week pleaded not guilty to charges that he conspired to overturn the results of the 2020 election by conspiring to block Congress from confirming Biden victory over him. He also pleaded not guilty to charges that he obstructed the certification by directing his supporters to descend on the Capitol on the day of the January 6th attack.He is also accused of – and has pleaded not guilty to – scheming to disrupt the election process and deprive Americans of their right to have their votes counted.Lauro slammed the indictment as politically motivated and full of holes.“This is what’s called a Swiss cheese indictment – so many holes that we’re going to be identifying,” Lauro said.Lauro suggested that his side would argue that Trump’s actions were protected by his constitutional right to free speech as well as presidential immunity.Taking aim at Biden, the Democratic incumbent, Lauro added: “This is the first time in history that a sitting president has used his justice department to go after a political opponent to knock him out of a race that creates grave constitutional problems.”Lauro confirmed that he planned to file a motion to dismiss the conspiracy charges, as well as another to transfer the case from Washington DC’s federal courthouse to one in West Virginia, a state where Trump won 69% of the votes in 2020, his second largest margin of victory in a state after Wyoming.“We would like a diverse venue and diverse jury to have an expectation that will reflect the characteristics of the American people,” he said. “I think West Virginia would be an excellent venue.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn Sunday, Trump took to the rightwing social media platform Truth Social to claim – again and without evidence – that he would not get a fair trial in Washington DC. He has repeatedly insulted the nation’s capital by calling it a swamp of radical liberals.Lauro was brought on to Trump’s legal team in mid-July. He has defended a string of controversial clients who include Dewayne Allen Levesque – manager of the Pink Pony nightclub in Florida who was acquitted of charges of racketeering, conspiracy, and aiding and abetting prostitution – and the disgraced NBA referee Tim Donaghy, who admitted to taking payoffs from bookies in exchange for a one-year, three-month prison sentence.Trump will not accept a plea deal in the criminal conspiracy charges, Lauro told CBS.The charges which Lauro discussed Sunday are contained in one of three criminal indictments pending against the former president.He is also facing New York state charges related to hush money payments to porn actor Stormy Daniels. And he also faces a separate federal indictment pertaining to his allegedly illegal hoarding of government secrets at his Florida resort after his presidency.Trump has pleaded not guilty in the two other cases against him as well.Shortly after Lauro made his remarks Sunday to CBS, the news network released a poll showing that a little more than half of Americans believe Trump tried to stay in office after losing to Biden through illegal and unconstitutional means. And most Americans see the charges pursued against Trump as attempts to defend democracy and uphold the rule of law, despite the former president’s insistence that he is being politically persecuted. More