Federal prosecutors plan to use some of former President Donald Trump’s statements about the 2020 election against him in his upcoming election fraud trial in D.C., including some that targeted Black Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss.
Out of the four criminal indictments Trump faces, this case addresses the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection that prosecutors are trying to prove was incited by Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him in an attempt to reverse President Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
The former president was accused of conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction, and conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted for trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Special counsel Jack Smith and his team submitted a new court filing that details their intentions to reveal Trump’s lengthy history of claiming that the election results were phony chiefly because he disapproved of them and how he supported the Capitol rioters by calling them “patriots” and political hostages.
The filing claims Trump had “an established pattern of using public statements and social media posts to subject his perceived adversaries to threats and harassment” in the trial.
One of the instances of those alleged “threats and harassment” that prosecutors point to is the treatment of Freeman and her daughter Moss, two former Fulton County election workers who were falsely accused by Trump and supporters in his camp of stealing votes.
The filing states that Trump continued to “falsely attack” the pair “despite being on notice that his claims about them in 2020 were false and had subjected them to vile, racist, and violent threats and harassment.”
Prosecutors go on to note that after the House Jan. 6 committee published transcripts of its…
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