How Trump Plans to Fight His Federal Election-Interference Case

WASHINGTON—With less than six months to prepare for his federal election-interference trial, Donald Trump’s lawyers are turning to a familiar strategy for the former president: long-shot legal motions that publicly criticize the case and raise novel questions that could serve to delay it. Lauro said they would abide by Chutkan’s trial schedule “as we must,” but he vowed to challenge each of the four counts in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment, which accuses the former president of conspiring to cling to power after his 2020 election loss through actions that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. “There’s going to be an enormity of unique legal issues,” Lauro said, indicating the defense team would be offering a panoply of arguments, including that the case violates Trump’s First Amendment rights and that prosecutors inappropriately wielded conspiracy charges against a political opponent. A president’s executive immunity In what Lauro said would be one of his first filings, Trump’s team will argue that he is immune from prosecution because the allegations involve actions he took when he was president—and therefore the case should be dismissed before it goes to a jury. That ruling, which suggested that presidents can be found liable for some speech outside of the context of their official duties, is now on appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. A selective prosecution motivated by politics At the Aug. 28 hearing, Lauro also said he plans to argue that Trump is being selectively prosecuted, “given the fact that this prosecution provides an advantage to these prosecutors’ boss, who is running a political campaign against President Trump.” Courts have set a very high bar for defendants to argue they were selectively prosecuted, requiring them to show that others similarly situated aren’t being prosecuted and that any discrimination is intentional.