Trump pleads not guilty to charges he tried to overturn 2020 election
Donald Trump was indicted on four counts, including conspiracy charges and obstructing or impeding the certification of the electoral vote.
LEARN MOREPosted: 6:22 p.m. EDT Aug 3, 2023
After Donald Trump's Thursday arraignment, Scripps News spoke with Gerard Filitti, Senior Counsel at the Lawfare Project, about the co-conspirators who were listed in the latest indictment, but who have not been named or charged themselves so far.
"There are a few reasons not to bring charges," Filitti said. "One is to keep the case simple, to keep it focused on Donald Trump. If you have a case involving multiple defendants, your timeline is shot. You're looking at dragging things out because each one of those defendants will have separate motions, separate demands, separate requests. So having a speedy trial will be much more difficult if you have six co-defendants along with President Trump. The other part of that is, of course, the prosecution is looking for an opportunity to induce one of those potential co-defendants to flip, to testify about Donald Trump to give more insight into what President Trump knew and when he knew it for the government to make the case that he knowingly misrepresented that there had been election fraud."
"I think that the steps that they should be taking is to anticipate that they can be prosecuted pretty much at any time and that they should take steps, including preparing, talking to counsel, discussing what the issues are, trying to prepare a defense even before charges are levied," Filitti said. "Because you know what the are — you're seeing this complaint. So kind of preparing your defense before you're indicted. Sometimes you never get indicted. But in this case it is likely we will see indictments. It is likely that at some point in time President Trump probably rely on a 'reliance of counsel' argument, that some of the lawyers involved were believed to be unnamed co-conspirators. And that will make it more important for the government to make the case against them, that you can't give your clients bad advice that endangers the Constitution. "
