Many posts have discussed the insurrection of January 6, 2021.
On New Year's Eve, the GOP majority on the House Judiciary Committee released the transcript of special counsel Jack Smith's December 17 testimony.
Q But the President's statements that he believed the election was rife with fraud, those certainly are statements that are protected by the First Amendment, correct?
A Absolutely not. If they are made to target a lawful government function and they are made with knowing falsity, no, they are not. That was my point about fraud not being protected by the First Amendment.
Q I mean, there is a long list of disputed elections, I mean, the election of 1800, 1960, year 2000, where candidates believed they were wronged by the -- you know, because they lost. And there's a long history of candidates speaking out about they believe there's been fraud, there's been other problems with the integrity of the election process. And I think you would agree that those types of statements are sort of at the core of the First Amendment rights of a Presidential candidate, right?
A There is no historical analog for what President Trump did in this case. As we said in the indictment, he was free to say that he thought he won the election. He was even free to say falsely that he won the election. But what he was not free to do was violate Federal law and use knowing -- knowingly false statements about election fraud to target a lawful government function. That he was not allowed to do. And that differentiates this case from any past history.
Q A lot of these statements, though, you know, people come into the Oval Office -- I mean, the President isn't conducting his own due diligence. He is receiving people in his office that are telling him these things, whether it be Rudy Giuliani, whether it be John Eastman, whether it be Jeffrey Clark, whether it be Sidney Powell. And, you know, for the most part, he is just receiving this information and, you know, his statements are almost just regurgitating what these people have told him. I mean, isn't that the case?
A No. And, in fact, one of the strengths of our case and why we felt we had such strong proof is all witnesses were not going to be political enemies of the President. They were going to be political allies.We had numerous witnesses who would say, "I voted for President Trump. I campaigned for Trump President Trump. I wanted him to win." The Speaker of the House in Arizona. The Speaker of the House in Michigan. We had an elector in Pennsylvania who is a former Congressman who was going to be an elector for President Trump who said that what they were trying to do was an attempt to overthrow the government and illegal. Our case was built on, frankly, Republicans who put their allegiance to the country before the party.And so the President got information from people he trusted on other issues. He rejected it whenever it didn't fit him staying in office. And there was a pattern in our case where any time any information came in that would mean he could no longer be President he would reject it. And any theory, no matter how far-fetched, no matter how not based in law, that would indicate that he could, he latched on to that. And we had -- we were confident that we had very strong proof of that pattern. He also, I would just add, very consciously did not try to reach out to the sort of people who have the most expertise on these issues. He reached out to people who he thought could back him up.
