Former President Donald Trump heralded his lawyers’ sitdown Thursday with special counsel Jack Smith as advancing his cause even as a new federal indictment loomed.
In a post on his Truth Social page, Mr. Trump said his legal team had a ‘productive meeting’ with Justice Department prosecutors in Washington, where a grand jury is mulling an indictment against Mr. Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol and attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
“My attorneys had a productive meeting with the DOJ this morning, explaining in detail that I did nothing wrong, was advised by many lawyers and that an indictment would only further destroy our Country,” Mr. Trump wrote.
He also pushed back on a news report that the former president’s lawyers were told to expect an indictment during the meeting.
“No indication of notice was given during the meeting — Do not trust the Fake News on anything!,” Mr. Trump wrote.
The meeting occurred the same day the federal grand jury convened at a federal courthouse in Washington to continue their probe into Mr. Trump’s efforts to reverse the results of the 2020 election and the events surrounding the Jan. 6 riot. Jurors meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays but have not met in over a week, spurring speculation that an indictment could be imminent.
Andrew Leipold, a law professor at the University of Illinois who served on special counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s Whitewater investigation, described the meeting as a “last chance” for defense attorneys to convince prosecutors not to indict.
“It’s an opportunity to try to resolve the situation without an indictment, but the likelihood of defense attorneys talking prosecutors out of an indictment is pretty small,” he said.
Mr. Trump’s social media post hinted at a possible defense if he is indicted — that he was following the advice of his lawyers. That would enable him to claim that he was relying on the advice from his lawyers that his conduct was legal and that he can’t be prosecuted if their advice was unlawful.
At the time of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, he was repeatedly consulting with lawyers such as Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark and Kenneth Cheseboro.
However, other lawyers, including Attorney General William P. Barr, had advised Mr. Trump that some proposals such as proposing a slate of “alternate electors” had no legal basis, according to the Democrat-led House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 riot.
“Ignorance of the law is not a defense. The fact that your lawyer told you to do something illegal may give you a cause of action against your lawyer but it doesn’t give you a defense against criminal charges,” Mr. Leipold said.
It is more likely that Mr. Trump is blaming his attorneys because that will resonate better in the court of public opinion than it would in federal court as he continues his campaign for the presidency.
“It’s an argument with a great intuitive appeal. He’s floating out the idea that the law is complicated and he’s not a lawyer but was doing what his lawyers told him to do and they were wrong,” Mr. Leipold said. “It’s not a legal defense, but it will resonate with the general public.
Mr. Trump, who is the leading 2024 candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, confirmed last week that he received a letter from the Justice Department that he was a target of the grand jury probe. He said that he anticipated “an arrest and indictment” after receiving the target letter.
Federal prosecutors wrote in the letter that Mr. Trump could be charged with violating a federal law enacted to crack down on post-Civil War voting intimidation.
Mr. Smith’s letter also referred to three criminal statutes, including conspiracy to defraud the government and obstruction of an official proceeding.
If the grand jury does pull the trigger on an indictment, it would be the third time this year Mr. Trump was hit with criminal charges.
Mr. Smith has already filed 37 criminal charges against Mr. Trump in a separate case about illegally mishandling classified government documents. Mr. Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
In March, a Manhattan grand jury indicted Mr. Trump on state charges alleging he falsified records to cover up hush-money payments in 2016 to two women who claimed they had extramarital affairs with him. Mr. Trump denied their claims.
Mr. Trump could also face state charges in Georgia for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
In Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is overseeing an investigation of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results in that state and has hinted that the former president could be indicted next month. Ms. Willis said she will make a changing decision in August.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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