Donald Trump and his legal team are escalating efforts to discredit and delay a trial over his alleged attempt to overturn the 2020 election, as his fight to avert criminal convictions becomes ever more indistinguishable from his presidential campaign.
The former president’s attorney Sunday vowed to petition to relocate the trial from Washington, DC, claiming that a local jury won’t reflects the “characteristics” of the American people. And as prosecutors seek a speedy trial, he warned that his team will seek to run out the process for years in an apparent attempt to move it past the 2024 election.
Trump demanded the judge set to hear the case recuse herself in a flurry of assaults on the process that may fail legally, but will play into his campaign narrative that he is a victim of political persecution by the Biden administration designed to thwart a White House comeback.
Trump pleaded not guilty when he was arraigned in Washington last week – his third such plea in a criminal case in the past four months. But his new efforts to tarnish an eventual trial in this case mirror his long-term strategy of seeking to delegitimize any institution – including the courts, the Justice Department, US intelligence agencies and the press – that contradicts his narrative or challenges his power.
They unfolded as the precarious nature of his position after his third indictment began to sink in and the ramifications for the 2024 election widened.
Mike Pence, speaking on CNN this weekend, did not rule out providing testimony in a Trump trial if compelled, which would be a staggering potential scenario for a vice president to provide evidence against his ex-running mate.
Trump’s former Attorney General William Barr, meanwhile, dismissed one of the arguments the ex-president and his allies have turned to – that he was simply exercising his…
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