August 4, 2023 The latest on Trump’s 2020 election interference case

Former President Donald Trump on Friday railed against the federal criminal charges he faces over his efforts to remain in the White House after losing the 2020 election at his first campaign event since being indicted a third time. 

Trump delivered an unusually short speech at a fundraiser hosted by the Alabama Republican Party in Montgomery that focused heavily on his legal issues one day after appearing in court in Washington, DC, and pleading not guilty to the charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith. 

Trump touted his lead in the polls over GOP 2024 rivals and argued the indictments were only giving him a boost.  

There’s likely more to be added to the pile of legal problems on former President Donald Trump’s plate.

In Georgia, in the coming weeks, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to bring charges in her election subversion probe and it’s possible that Trump will be indicted in that.

Willis, a Democrat, is considering bringing conspiracy and racketeering charges. The probe was launched in 2021 following Trump’s call that January with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which he pushed the Republican to “find” votes to overturn the election results.

The special grand jury issued a report – which remains mostly under seal – that found there was no widespread voter fraud in the state and also suggested perjury charges be considered against some people who testified. Overall, it recommended charges against more than a dozen people, the foreperson said in interviews in February.

Willis is expected to present her case to a grand jury by September 1.

And then there’s the other case from special counsel Jack Smith alleging Trump mishandled classified documents from his White House and then obstructed the probe into the materials. That case is currently scheduled to go trial next May, and there will be regular pre-trial proceedings (at which, Trump is not required to appear) before that.

There’s also the criminal case that Manhattan prosecutors brought against Trump for a 2016 campaign hush money scheme, currently slated for trial in March.

Additionally there’s number of civil lawsuits he faces, including a second defamation case brought by E. Jean Carroll, well as the New York attorney general’s civil fraud case against his family and businesses.

This court calendar is overlaid against his 2024 campaign schedule as well. The first Republican presidential debate, for instance, is on August 23.

Though Trump will not be required to appear in court for hearings on pre-trial matters, he may seek to do so, if he embraces a strategy of making a spectacle out of the election subversion case. Speaking on the airport tarmac, Trump made brief remarks that the prosecution was political after Thursday’s hearing, and he routinely fundraises off of every new development putting him in deeper legal trouble.

Read more about the legal challenges Trump faces here.

CNN’s Dan Berman contributed reporting to this post.

Donald Trump’s campaign released a new video Friday attacking the prosecutors who have brought cases against or are investigating the former president one day after Trump was arrested and arraigned for a third time. 

The video attacks federal special prosecutor Jack Smith, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and dubs the group the “Fraud Squad.” 

“Meet the cast of unscrupulous accomplices he’s assembled to get Trump,” the narrator says in the video.

Trump appeared in court on Thursday in Washington, DC, and pleaded not guilty to charges brought by Smith related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

Trump is now bracing for a potential fourth indictment as Willis has said she will announce charging decisions by September 1 in her investigation into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential election results.

Former President Donald Trump, who was arraigned on federal charges related to attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat, prepares to depart Washington at Reagan Washington National Airport in nearby Arlington, Virginia, on August 3.

Former President Donald Trump’s mounting legal jeopardy is raising a stark political question: can anything break the sustained electoral stalemate that has left the country divided almost exactly in half between the Republican and Democratic coalitions?

Trump was indicted for a third time on Tuesday and is facing a swarm of criminal accusations unprecedented for an active presidential candidate, much less a former president. But during this ordeal, his lead in the 2024 GOP presidential primary has solidified. And while polls have highlighted some clear warning signs for him as a general election nominee, mostly they point to another closely fought contest, with President Joe Biden usually holding a small overall lead and a tiny handful of precariously balanced swing states likely to decide the outcome. A New York Times/Siena College poll released on Tuesday, however, found Trump and Biden tied in a hypothetical matchup at 43 percent.

Several big dynamics are converging, including a slowdown in inflation and acceleration of Trump’s legal troubles, that could provide Democrats a tailwind next year, particularly in the presidential race. But all of these forces face the immovable object of the entrenched demographic and geographic divisions that have produced one of the longest periods in American history in which neither party has been able to establish a durable or decisive advantage over the other.

The parties now represent coalitions with such divergent visions of America’s future, particularly whether it welcomes or resists racial and cultural change, that it’s unclear what could allow one side to break out from the close competition between them. And that includes the prospect of Republicans choosing a presidential nominee who could be shuttling between the campaign trail and the courtroom.

Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential elections – something no party has done since the formation of the modern party system in 1828. That suggests the Democratic coalition, on a national basis, is somewhat larger than the GOP’s.

But the Democrats’ difficulty competing outside of large metropolitan areas, as well as the small state bias in the Senate and the Electoral College, has allowed the GOP to remain highly competitive in this era.

Read the full analysis here.

Former President Donald Trump, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, arrives at Reagan National Airport in Washington en route to his arraignment in federal court on Thursday, August 3.

Former President Donald Trump, in a court filing Friday, pleaded not guilty to the new charges special counsel Jack Smith brought against him in the case alleging mishandling of classified documents from his time in the White House.

The filing marked the second time in 24 hours that the former president entered a not guilty plea, following his arraignment Thursday in the special counsel’s separate investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Last week, Smith charged Trump, who had already faced 37 criminal charges in the classified documents case, with one additional count of willful retention of national defense information and two additional obstruction counts. He also filed new charges against Walt Nauta, the former president’s aide, and added Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira to the case.

Trump and Nauta had pleaded not guilty to the initial charges earlier this summer.

With the new fling, Trump indicated to the court that he would not be physically present for an arraignment on the new superseding indictment scheduled for August 10 before a US magistrate judge in Fort Pierce, Florida.

Trump’s co-defendants, De Oliveira and Nauta, have not indicated in court filings their plans for the arraignment.

Former President Donald Trump sits between his attorneys in court in Washington on Thursday.

Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya scheduled the next hearing in the 2020 election subversion case for August 28 at 10 a.m. ET.

That proceeding will happen before US District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is no stranger to January 6, 2021, litigation.

Prosecutor Thomas Windom said the government was available all days that the magistrate judge offered as potential hearing days, but would prefer the earliest one. Former President Trump’s team requested August 28, the latest of the three options. 

Prosecutors from special counsel Jack Smith’s office did not seek pretrial detention for Trump. Instead, the former president was released on very minimal conditions of release, which includes not being allowed to communicate with anyone known to be a witness in the case unless through an attorney. 

As the case against Trump progresses to a trial, the 2024 election calendar looms large.  

Prosecutors pushed for a speedy trial at the hearing on Thursday, and for the case to proceed just as others do. “This case will benefit from normal order, including speedy trial,” Windom said. 

Upadhyaya said that federal Judge Tanya Chutkan – who will preside of the case — “intends to set a trial date at that first hearing on August 28.” 

But John Lauro, an attorney for the former president, highlighted the “massive amount” of discovery they would need to look through before suggesting a trial date.  

Upadhyaya said prosecutors are required to file a recommendation in seven days of when the trial should be held. After their recommendation is filed, Trump’s attorneys will have another seven days before filing their own recommendations.  

The hearing will happen five days after the first Republican presidential primary debate. Trump has not yet committed to participating.

Judge Tanya Chutkan.

District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who’s assigned to preside over former President Donald Trump’s criminal case in Washington, DC, has repeatedly spoken out in very strong terms against the efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and disrupt the transfer of power. 

The next hearing in the case is set for August 28 at 10 a.m. ET.

Chutkan, a Jamaica native, has served as a federal judge since she was appointed by Barack Obama in 2014 and confirmed by the Senate in a 95-0 vote. After graduating from University of Pennsylvania Law School, Chutkan spent more than a decade working as a public defender in Washington, DC.

According to her biography on the court website, Chutkan “argued several appellate cases and tried over 30 cases, including numerous serious felony matters” as a public defender.

Though Chutkan was randomly appointed to oversee the special counsel’s criminal case, she is no stranger to January 6, 2021, litigation.

In November 2021, Chutkan forcefully rejected Trump’s attempts to block the House select committee investigating January 6 from accessing more than 700 pages of records from his White House.

Chutkan, like many other federal judges in Washington, has presided over dozens of criminal cases against alleged January 6 rioters. She has been outspoken about the riot at several sentencing hearings – calling the violence an assault on American democracy and warning of future danger from political violence – and has repeatedly gone over what prosecutors have requested for convicted rioters’ prison sentences.

At a December 2021 sentencing hearing, she looked ahead to the 2024 election, saying that “every day we are hearing about reports of anti-democratic factions, people plotting potential violence in 2024.”

“It has to be made clear that trying to stop the peaceful transition of power, assaulting law enforcement, is going to be met with certain punishment,” she said.

Chutkan has even tacitly referenced Trump during criminal sentencings, saying to one rioter that he “did not go to the United States Capitol out of any love for our country. … He went for one man.”

Read more about the judge here.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr on Wednesday undermined a key pillar of his old boss’ defense in the special counsel’s probe into 2020 election interference, telling CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that Donald Trump “knew well he lost the election.”

The former attorney general also described Trump’s alleged actions as detailed in the indictment as “nauseating” and “despicable,” saying on “The Source,” “someone who engaged in that kind of bullying about a process that is fundamental to our system and to our self-government shouldn’t be anywhere near the Oval Office.”

A central premise of the special counsel’s case is that Trump knew the election claims he was making were false after being told by several close aides that he had lost the election. Trump’s lawyers have argued that his statements were protected under the First Amendment, a position that Barr, in his first interview since Trump’s third indictment, said was not a valid argument.

He added: “At first I wasn’t sure, but I have come to believe he knew well he had lost the election.”

Special counsel Jack Smith brought four charges against Trump on Tuesday – including conspiracy to defraud the United States – as part of his investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election leading up to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. Trump was arraigned and pleaded not guilty to the charges in court on Thursday.

While a loyalist for much of his tenure as Trump’s attorney general, Barr notably contradicted the former president’s claims that the election was rigged when he said in December 2020 that the Justice Department had not found substantial evidence of widespread voter fraud. He resigned soon after and has since emerged as one of Trump’s most significant critics.

Barr defended Smith in the interview Wednesday, breaking from many Republicans who have disparaged the special counsel’s probes into Trump as being politically motivated.

“He is the kind of prosecutor, in my view, that if he thinks someone has committed a crime, he, you know, homes in on it and really goes to try to make that case,” Barr said. “There’s no question he’s aggressive but I do not think he’s a partisan actor.”

The former attorney general added that he believes Smith has more evidence to prove that the former president knew the election was not stolen.

Former President Donald Trump arrives at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Thursday.

A day after being arraigned for the third time, former President Donald Trump complained about the time and cost spent on his many legal battles and called on the Supreme Court to “intercede.”

“My political opponent has hit me with a barrage of weak lawsuits, including D.A., A.G., and others, which require massive amounts of my time & money to adjudicate,” Trump complained on Truth Social. “Resources that would have gone into Ads and Rallies, will now have to be spent fighting these Radical Left Thugs in numerous courts throughout the Country. I am leading in all Polls, including against Crooked Joe, but this is not a level playing field. It is Election Interference, & the Supreme Court must intercede.”

Trump pleaded not guilty Thursday to four criminal charges related to special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. 

After the hearing, Trump criticized the latest charges and described the indictment as “a persecution of a political opponent.”

“This is a persecution of a political opponent. This was never supposed to happen in America,” Trump said while giving brief remarks Thursday before boarding his private plane back to New Jersey. “This is the persecution of the person that’s leading by very, very substantial numbers in the Republican primary and leading Biden by a lot. So if you can’t beat him you persecute him or you prosecute him. We can’t let this happen in America.” 

Trump is expected to speak tonight at the Alabama GOP summer dinner in Montgomery.

Former President Donald Trump speaks before he boards his plane at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Thursday.

Two-thirds of Americans (65%) say that the charges former President Donald Trump faces over efforts to overturn the 2020 elections are serious, according to a new poll from ABC News and Ipsos conducted after Trump’s latest indictment.

That’s a larger share than felt that way about either the charges he faces over alleged mishandling of classified documents (61%) or the charges related to a hush money payment that he faces in New York (52%). Most (51%) describe the new charges as “very serious,” compared with 42% who said so on the documents charges and 30% on the hush money case.

A majority in the new poll say Trump should have been charged with a crime in this case (52% vs. 32% who say he should not have been charged) and about half say he ought to suspend his presidential campaign because of it (49% say so vs. 36% who say he should not and 15% who say they don’t know).

A sizable share describe the new charges as politically motivated (46%) while 40% feel they are not politically motivated.

There are broad partisan gaps in views of the seriousness of the new charges, with 91% of Democrats calling them serious along with 67% of independents, though just 38% of Republicans agree. The gap between Democrats and Republicans widens to 65 points when looking at those who call the charges “very serious” (84% of Democrats feel that way vs. 19% of Republicans; 53% of independents say the same).

The survey also shows that both Trump and President Joe Biden face negative favorability ratings (30% hold a favorable view of Trump, 33% for Biden).

Asked about how the US Justice Department is handling its investigation into Hunter Biden, 35% said they have at least some confidence it is being handled in a fair and nonpartisan manner, 46% said they were not confident in that and 19% said they did not know.

The poll also shows that 39% of Americans believe the US House of Representatives should start an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden over Hunter Biden’s business deals, a view driven largely by Republicans (74% of Republicans say the House should start an impeachment inquiry on this matter vs. 35% of independents and just 11% of Democrats).

More about the poll: The ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted online August 2-3 among a random national sample of 1,076 adults. The results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.