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Donald Trump’s attorneys are back in court today fighting to have his Georgia election interference case thrown out.
The former president’s legal team argues that his false claims that the 2020 vote was stolen are protected under the First Amendment.
It marks the first hearing in the case since the judge ruled that Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis could remain part of the prosecution.
It comes after Republican presidential candidate and part-time Bible salesman appeared to be testing out the boundaries of a new gag order imposed on him ahead of his hush money criminal trial in New York.
Judge Juan Merchan granted the request from Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, which prohibits the former president from talking about anyone involved in the case or their families.
The former president had already lashed out at the judge and his daughter on Truth Social before the order was signed on Tuesday and then doubled down on his attack on Wednesday morning.
Meanwhile, a California judge has said that former Trump attorney John Eastman should be stripped of his law license over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election on Mr Trump’s behalf
Tonight: Star-studded Biden-Obama-Clinton fundraiser pulls ‘historic’ $25m haul in New York
The Independent’s White House correspondent Andrew Feinberg reports:
When it comes to hauling in cash for President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign, it’s now obvious that three presidential heads are always better than one.
That’s the lesson Biden-Harris campaign officials are taking away from a star-studded fundraiser to be held on Thursday evening at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, which is set to raise more than $25m for the president’s campaign coffers.
In a statement announcing what they described as the “historic” result, the campaign said the fundraiser, billed as “An Evening with President Biden and Presidents Obama and Clinton,” represents the “most successful political fundraiser in American history” with a 5,000-strong sellout crowd at the historic Manhattan venue and “thousands more” taking in the spectacle online.
Oliver O’Connell28 March 2024 14:59
Sexual assault lawsuit against CPAC’s Matt Schlapp is dropped
A man who once accused one of Washington DC’s highest-profile Republican operatives of sexually assaulting him has rescinded his allegations and says he regrets making them.
Matt Schlapp, head of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) gathering, was accused by a campaign staffer for then-Senate candidate Herschel Walker of groping him during a car ride in 2022 as the staffer, Carlton Huffman, drove Schlapp back to his hotel room.
Huffman further accused the CPAC big wig, who is married to a woman (former Trump White House staffer Mercedes Schlapp), of inviting him up to his hotel room.
Now, in a statement first obtained by Politico through his onetime legal opponent, Huffman bizarrely says the whole thing was a “misunderstanding”.
Here’s John Bowden to get to the bottom of it all.
Oliver O’Connell28 March 2024 14:45
His lawyers wrote in a filing that prosecutors are seeking “to punish as criminal conduct by Mr. Shafer which was lawful at the time.” They argued that Shafer “was attempting to comply with the advice of legal counsel” and the requirements of the Electoral Count Act.
Shafer’s lawyers also ask that three phrases be struck from the indictment: “duly elected and qualified presidential electors,” “false Electoral College votes” and “lawful electoral votes.” They argue that those phrases are used to assert that the Democratic slate of electors was valid and the Republican slate of electors in which Shafer participated was not. They argue that those are “prejudicial legal conclusions” about issues that should be decided by the judge or by the jury at trial.
Prosecutors argue that Shafer is using “incorrect, extrinsic facts and legal conclusions … to somehow suggest that he was or may have been a lawful presidential elector at the time of the charged conduct.” They agreed that the indictment includes “disputed” and “unproven” allegations but said “that is not and never has been grounds for the dismissal of an indictment.”
Willis and her team experienced several setbacks in March. Although McAfee did not grant defense requests to remove her from the case, he was sharply critical of her actions and said Wade, her hand-picked lead prosecutor on the case, must step aside for Willis to continue the prosecution. Just days earlier, the judge dismissed six of the 41 counts in the indictment, including three against Trump, finding that prosecutors failed to provide enough detail about the alleged crimes.
Four people have pleaded guilty after reaching deals with prosecutors. Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty. No trial date has been set, though Willis has asked that it begin in August.
Trump’s lawyers wrote in their filing that the crimes their client is charged with fall into five separate areas: Republican elector certificates submitted by Georgia Republicans; a request to the Georgia House speaker to call a special legislative session; a filing in a lawsuit challenging the 2020 presidential election; a January 2021 phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger; and a letter sent to Raffensperger in September 2021.
“The First Amendment, in affording the broadest protection to political speech and discussion regarding governmental affairs, not only embraces but encourages exactly the kind of behavior under attack in this Indictment,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.
Prosecutors argued in response that the indictment “is based on criminal acts, not speech.” Wherever speech is involved, they wrote, it is “speech integral to criminal conduct, fraud, perjury, threats, criminal solicitation, or lies that threaten to deceive and harm the government.”
Most of the charges against Shafer have to do with his involvement in helping to organize a group of Georgia Republicans to cast Electoral College votes for Trump even though the state’s election had been certified in favor of Biden. The charges against him include impersonating a public officer, forgery, false statements and writings, and attempting to file false documents.
Georgia election interference: What is happening at today’s Fulton County hearing?
The charges against former President Donald Trump in the Georgia election interference case seek to criminalize political speech and advocacy conduct that the First Amendment protects, his lawyers argued in a court filing challenging the indictment.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee plans to hear arguments on that filing and on two pretrial motions filed by former Georgia Republican Party chair David Shafer during a hearing set for Thursday. Lawyers for Shafer argue that he acted legally when he and other state Republicans signed a certificate asserting that Trump won the 2020 presidential election in Georgia and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors.
McAfee is forging ahead with the case even as Trump and other defendants have said they plan to seek a ruling from the Georgia Court of Appeals to disqualify District Attorney Fani Willis. The judge earlier this month rejected defense efforts to remove Willis and her office over her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, but he did give the defendants permission to seek a review of his decision from the appeals court.
Willis in August obtained an indictment against Trump and 18 others, accusing them of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to try to illegally overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, which the Republican incumbent narrowly lost to Democrat Joe Biden. All of the defendants were charged with violating Georgia’s expansive anti-racketeering law, along with other alleged crimes.
Watch LIVE: Fulton County hearing in Trump Georgia election case
Lawyers for Donald Trump and his co-defendants have returned to the Fulton County Courthouse for the first pre-trial hearing since their attempts to have District Attorney Fani Willis removed from the case.
Judge Scott McAfee is set to hear arguments on several motions filed by Trump and his co-defendant, former Georgia GOP chairman David Shafer, as they seek dismissal of their criminal charges.
Oliver O’Connell28 March 2024 14:03
Fox commentator hits Trump for failing to visit swing states
Here’s the increasingly invaluable Jessica Tarlov arguing on Fox yesterday that Trump is too busy visting courtrooms and golfing to campaign properly.
Speaking of that network, here’s a couple of other jaw-dropping clips from the airwaves yesterday, courtesy of Sean Hannity and Jeanine Piro.
Joe Sommerlad28 March 2024 13:58
Larry David calls Trump ‘little baby’ and ‘a sick man’
Joe Sommerlad28 March 2024 13:30
Trump Media and Reddit are the new ‘meme stocks’, suring despite questionable profit prospects
Trump’s post-Twitter tech outfit and Reddit are the first notable social media companies to begin trading publicly in the last five years.
They’re also, thanks to the rabid reception among day traders coupled with the companies’ dubious profit outlooks, the latest meme stocks.
That term refers to shares in modish companies whose underlying business fails to justify the accompanying surge in their price.
The action is often driven by small investors who pile into a trending stock for a specific reason, be it belief that a struggling company can turn itself around, a disdain for so-called short sellers — or fidelity to a former president.
Here’s more on the Truth Social floatation.
Joe Sommerlad28 March 2024 13:00
Black men could swing 2024 for Trump. Is Bidenworld prepared?
Here’s Andrew Feinberg and Eric Garcia’s report on how the Trump and Biden campaigns plan to respond to polling data that suggests almost 25 per cent of Black voters are ready to back the Republican.
Joe Sommerlad28 March 2024 12:30
