'A tangled web': Legal expert says new audio of Trump lawyer points to more defendants – Raw Story
David joined Raw Story in 2023 after nearly a decade of writing about the legal industry for Bloomberg Law. He is also a co-founder and a commissioning editor at Hypatia Press, a publisher that specializes in philosophical works that challenge religion or spirituality.
New audio recordings released by CNN revealed that ex-Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro had lots of grievances with the ex-president's campaign, but it also points to potentially new defendants, according to an ex-prosecutor.
Joyce Vance did an in-depth dive on the new evidence from CNN, which put together a timeline of what happened to fake elector ballots before Jan. 6, 2021. The article the outlet put out included some already reported information, as well as new audio recordings, former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance said on Friday.
"None of this makes sense," Vance wrote while walking through the new evidence.
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"It suggests some of the folks he worked with, who avoided indictment in Fulton County, may have some culpability — we’ll get to that," Vance wrote. "Several of them have reportedly spoken with either federal or state prosecutors, or both and remained silent since, possibly suggesting cooperation in the real sense of that term. But none of this is exculpatory for Chesebro."
One individual whom Vance highlights is Matthew Morgan, a lawyer who joined Vice President Pence’s office in 2017, she says.
"Morgan seems to have been more involved than he encouraged the January 6 committee to believe," the article states. "Although he told them thathe became uncomfortable with the fake electors plan by mid-December and that he separated himself from the plan at that point so that he had 'zero' responsibility for it, this email and Chesebro’s testimony suggest that wasn’t exactly the case. Morgan was in the thick of things at least until January 4, 2021."
Vance called the whole thing "a tangled web."
"Just like we learned a great deal from the public hearings the January 6 committee held, we’re likely to learn more when, if, this case goes to trial," she wrote on her Substack. "Trump is the only defendant in Washington, D.C., but even the larger range of defendants in Georgia fails to reflect all of the people who played [roles], big and small, in the effort to end democracy in this country by overturning a lawful election."
A massive storm could dump snow across the nation "coast to coast" in the first week of 2024, a new forecast shows.
MSNBC meteorologist Bill Karins Monday detailed the 5-day journey of a strong storm that one computer model shows traveling across country until it hits the East Coast on Sunday, he said.
"We have had one of the worst starts to a snow season ever," Karins said. "The first snow could be a big snow."
According to the forecast, the storm will begin on the West Coast Tuesday night with strong winds, rain, cold air and snow in high-altitude areas.
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Northern areas will see snow as the storm travels across the U.S., Karins said.
What impact the storm will have on the mid-Atlantic and New England remains unclear, but Karins said there is a chance for a major snowstorm.
"We don't know who's going to get the worst of that," the weatherman said. "I'm sure i'll be talking about this a lot more in the days ahead."
Watch the video below or click here.
Former President Donald Trump argued Monday it shouldn’t matter if he committed criminal acts to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power because he wasn’t on the campaign trail at the time.
Trump took to Truth Social to bemoan special counsel Jack Smith’s weekend filing challenging his presidential immunity claim in the Washington, D.C. election interference case.
“The filing by special counsel, (Deranged) Jack Smith, was the latest in a fight over WHETHER FORMER PRESIDENTS CAN BE HELD CRIMINALLY LIABLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS IN OFFICE,” Trump wrote.
"First of all, I did nothing wrong, and while it should not even matter, I was not campaigning —The 2020 Election was LONG OVER," he said.
"What I was doing is bringing to light the fact that the Election was, without question, Rigged and Stolen. As President, and Commander-in-Chief, it was my duty to do so! If I did not do this, I would have been in violation of my Oath of Office
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Smith’s legal team disagreed in an 82-page filing to the appeals court Saturday, in which they argue nothing in the U.S. Constitution protects former presidents from the federal justice system.
“The defendant’s sweeping immunity claim threatens to license presidents to commit crimes to remain in office,” argued Smith’s deputy James Pearce.
"The founders did not intend and would never have countenanced such a result.”
The decision about the immunity claim rests with the D.C. District Court, slated to hear arguments on Jan. 9, after Trump appealed Judge Tanya Chutkan’s ruling that he was not protected under presidential immunity.
Smith tried to fast-track the debate to the Supreme Court, but the justices turned down his request.
Delay tactics from Trump’s legal team are at the heart of the case because they could potentially push the court date past the November 2024 presidential election.
If Trump returns to the White House, he would potentially be able to have the charges, to which he has pleaded not guilty, dropped.
In a follow-up post, Trump doubled down on the election interference claims and hurled accusations at Democrats he has blamed for court proceedings he’s dubbed a political witch hunt.
The rant presents a challenge of interpretation as Trump abandons verbs halfway through his 535-word sentence.
“They spied on my Campaign, started the Fake Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, Lied to Congress, Abused FISA, Stuffed Ballot Boxes, Misused 51 Intelligence Agents, Illegal FBI/Twitter Files, Facebook Lock Boxes, Never Got State Legislatures to approve Election Changes, Harassed Election Observers, and much more….”
The New Year’s Day message ends with a reminder.
“REMEMBER, Crooked Joe Biden and his CORRUPT JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, D.A.’s and A.G.’s, has attacked his Political Opponent at a level never seen before in this Country,” said Trump.
“He is playing a very dangerous game, and the great people of America WILL NOT STAND FOR IT.”
Donald Trump recently shared a post to social media that he tried to activate the Insurrection Act as the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was unfolding — a move that may signal a new direction for his legal strategy, Newsweek reported.
The post says Trump was prevented from announcing his use of the act — which is only activated in extreme situations — on X because the platform, then known as Twitter, was removing his posts.
"If Trump's reposting is an endorsement of this theory, it is a big departure from his current defense in his election interference case. The former president's claim until now has been that he didn't know how serious the situation was at the Capitol building," Newsweek's Sean O'Driscoll writes.
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Among the four criminal cases facing Trump is his alleged attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election in the run-up to the riot.
As Newsweek points out, the Insurrection Act allows the president to call in the military to put down a rebellion or extreme violence. It is very rarely used, with the last time being during the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles in 1992.
The law has been invoked a small number of times in the past century, most recently by then President George H.W. Bush to put down the Los Angeles riots in 1992 after the police beating of Rodney King.
Politico's Kyle Cheney wrote on X that Trump's "promoting the nonsense idea that he wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act amid the violence on Jan. 6. If it were true (which it clearly is not), it would blow up his legal defenses and also would likely have triggered waves of violence."
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