To hear his lawyers tell it, Donald Trump was alarmed by Russia\u2019s interference in the 2016 election, motivated as president to focus on cybersecurity and had a good-faith basis four years later to worry that foreign actors had again meddled in the race. But to federal prosecutors, 2016 is significant as the year that Trump spread misinformation about voter fraud and proved himself resistant to accepting the outcome of elections that might not go his way. Even though a trial set for next year in Washington is centred on Trump\u2019s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, lawyers on both sides have signalled their desire \u2013 for totally different purposes \u2013 to draw attention to the tumultuous presidential contest four years earlier as a way to help explain his state of mind after his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we\u2019re talking about someone\u2019s belief or mental state, there is usually no one piece of evidence that is dispositive,\u201d said David Aaron, a former Justice Department national security prosecutor. \u201cThere\u2019s usually multiple data points that each side will argue indicates one mental state or the other.\u201d The callback to the 2016 race is perhaps not surprising given the history-making events of that year when Russian operatives interfered in the election with what US officials say was a goal of getting Trump elected over his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. The meddling and its aftermath thrust the topic of election security and faith in democratic processes to the forefront of American discourse.<\/p>\n
It will ultimately be up to US District Judge Tanya Chutkan to determine what evidence is admissible at trial and what materials defence lawyers are entitled to get from prosecutors as part of the information-sharing process known as discovery. Special counsel Jack Smith\u2019s team says information about the 2016 election being sought by the defence is \u201cwholly irrelevant\u201d to the current case while telling Trump\u2019s lawyers and the judge that it wants to present evidence about Trump\u2019s history of claiming fraud.<\/p>\n
The interest in 2016 was laid bare in recent court filings, including one in which defence lawyers made a long-shot request to force prosecutors to turn over all materials, including a classified version of a US intelligence assessment, related to Russian interference and influence operations in that election. They say the intelligence community\u2019s 2017 assessment that Russia\u2019s meddling in the race reflected a \u201csignificant escalation\u201d by the Kremlin has direct bearing on Trump\u2019s confidence, or lack thereof, in the security of the 2020 election and helps explain the basis for him to have been \u201csceptical about the absence of foreign influence\u201d in that year\u2019s race.<\/p>\n
They also contend that actions he took as president, including a 2018 executive order imposing sanctions for foreign election interference, show he took the subject seriously. And they argue that the intelligence community assessment that Russia in 2016 sowed public discord shows Trump is not responsible for creating the environment prosecutors are now trying to \u201cblame\u201d him for. \u201cThis evidence rebuts the position of the Special Counsel\u2019s Office that President Trump\u2019s actions between November 2020 and January 2021 were motivated by a desire to maintain office and undertaken with specific intent and unlawful purpose,\u201d defence lawyers wrote.<\/p>\n
The motion, which glosses over the fact that Trump was the intended beneficiary of Russian interference in 2016 and that Trump as president often sought to minimise that assessment, is pending. Even if it\u2019s unlikely Trump\u2019s lawyers will be able to persuade Chutkan to order prosecutors to produce the materials, the request opens a window into a line of defence the team could raise. In a response, federal prosecutors said they were not in possession of the classified information being demanded and that the request was part of an effort to delay the case. They also say there\u2019s no evidence the 2020 race was tainted by foreign interference.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Smith\u2019s team sees 2016 as relevant for other reasons. The prosecutors say they want the jury to hear Trump\u2019s \u201chistorical record\u201d of sowing doubt in election results, including in 2016, when he claimed without evidence before Election Day that there had been widespread fraud and refused during a debate with Clinton to promise to respect the results of the election. The behaviour started even earlier, Smith\u2019s team notes, when Trump falsely claimed during the 2012 election that voting machines had switched votes from Republican candidate Mitt Romney to Democrat Barack Obama.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe defendant\u2019s false claims about the 2012 and 2016 elections are admissible because they demonstrate the defendant\u2019s common plan of falsely blaming fraud for election results he does not like, as well as his motive, intent, and plan to obstruct the certification of the 2020 election results and illegitimately retain power,\u201d prosecutors wrote. Although the federal rules of evidence don\u2019t permit prosecutors to present evidence of prior bad acts to prove a person\u2019s character, they can do so to establish intent, motive or preparation \u2013 which is what prosecutors say they want to do here.<\/p>\n
Such evidence could be compelling for a jury to the extent it shows Trump\u2019s effort to undo the 2020 results was part of a long-running pattern of behaviour, said Tamara Lave, a professor at the University of Miami law school. \u201cWhen Trump takes the stand or when the lawyers argue, \u2018He didn\u2019t mean this, he was just saying this, that\u2019s just Trump\u2019s way, he\u2019s just over the top,\u2019 the government gets to say, \u2018No, that\u2019s not what\u2019s going on here. You\u2019ve seen this over and over and over again. And so the fact that it\u2019s been going on for so long is an indication that there\u2019s nothing accidental about it,'\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Lauren Ouziel, a former federal prosecutor and a professor at Temple University\u2019s law school, said she expected prosecutors to be able to use Trump\u2019s prior statements at trial, but it will be up to jurors to decide how meaningful the evidence is. \u201cProsecutors like to use an analogy of bricks in a wall: \u2018We\u2019re going to give you evidence brick by brick, and by the end of the trial, it\u2019ll all fit together,'\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I would call this some of the bricks.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
To hear his lawyers tell it, Donald Trump was alarmed by Russia\u2019s interference in the 2016 election, motivated as president\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":4972,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[4842,4656,168,720,4845,112,679,4844,4843,3530,680,166],"class_list":["post-16692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-2016-us-presidential-elections","tag-corruption","tag-donald-trump","tag-election-manipulation","tag-false-claims","tag-indictment","tag-january-6-riots","tag-meddling","tag-russian-interference","tag-us-2024-presidential-elections","tag-us-district-judge-tanya-chutkan","tag-usa-2020-elections"],"reading_time":"6 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}