A former prosecutor slammed a defense attorney for Donald Trump over what he called “not a smart move” and an “admission” on live television related to the former president’s Jan. 6 indictments.
Trump attorney John Lauro claimed on both Fox News and Newsmax that the then-president urged then-vice president Mike Pence to “stop” the electoral college elections and “give state legislatures one last look” before confirming the count become .
“He was keen to find out what happened in the 2020 cycle… He asked Mr Pence to put the vote on hold for 10 days, to give state legislators an opportunity to speak and then they could make a decision on an audit, a re-examination exam or meet for re-certification,” Lauro told Newsmax on Thursday.
“But what he hasn’t done is send in the tanks, tell Mr Pence not to go to Capitol Hill, or do anything to obstruct the due process of government.”
Lauro made a similar statement on Fox News, which former Justice Department prosecutor Andrew Weissmann described on MSNBC as “…”. an admission and not a defense.
“A defense attorney making a statement on behalf of his client — that’s an admission,” Weissmann, an MSNBC contributor, told moderator Lawrence O’Donnell.
“Not that Donald Trump is going to testify, but if he were and didn’t say exactly that, he could be cross-examined on this matter,” Weissmann continued. “So that was just kind of a rookie mistake… It wasn’t a smart move.”
The indictment in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s 2020 Election Inquiry alleges that Trump held a meeting with Pence — along with a co-conspirator believed to be attorney John Eastman — in the Capitol two days before the riot, to investigate Pence “to persuade on the basis of the defendant’s knowingly false allegations”. Voter Fraud” that he should “reject or send Biden’s legitimate votes to the states instead of counting them.”
Just hours after Trump’s rampaging mob was broken up, the person believed to be Eastman emailed Pence’s attorney, pleading with him for “another relatively minor violation” of the Electoral Counts Act to consider and “adjourn for ten days to allow the Legislature to complete its work.”
O’Donnell explained that the Fox News clip shows Lauro “quoting Donald Trump who commits a crime.” Noting that the prosecution described the Trump-Pence meeting as a criminal conspiracy, he said Lauro blurted out the “words from Donald Trump’s mouth.”
Watch more of O’Donnell’s show below.