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Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley eviscerated the Justice Department’s latest indictment against former President Donald Trump, calling it a “disinformation indictment” that essentially criminalizes free speech.
“There’s less than meets the eye in this indictment. I thought the last indictment was a very serious threat for Donald Trump,” Turley said Tuesday on Fox News’ Special Report, referring to special counsel Jack Smith’s first indictment of Trump over retention of classified documents.
“When I take a red pen through material that is protected by the First Amendment, it reduces much of this to a haiku. Many of the things that the prosecutor is charging here [are] protected speech.”
“The most jarring thing about this indictment is that it basically just accuses him of disinformation,” he continued. “This is a disinformation indictment. It says that you were spreading falsehoods, that you were undermining the integrity of the election. That’s all part of the First Amendment.”
Turley said Smith’s latest indictment is reminiscent of his indictment against former Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell (R) for corruption, which was ultimately overturned in 2016 by the Supreme Court due to Smith’s thin legal rationale behind the charges.
“And I think that courts will look skeptically, he might have a fair shot with a D.C. jury and maybe a D.C. judge. He’s going to have a harder time with the courts. And this reminds me of sort of the [McDonnell] complaint, where he took the Virginia governor, got a conviction, and then it was unanimously overturned by the Supreme Court. It is a bridge too far,” Turley explained.
Likewise, constitutional lawyer Alan Dershowitz said Tuesday “there’s no smoking gun” in Smith’s indictment because it presupposes Trump actually believed he lost the 2020 election but contested it anyway.
“There is no one who is credibly prepared to testify that Donald Trump said to them, ‘I know personally I lost the election,’” he said on Hannity. “There’s a lot of evidence that people told him we lost the election. But, you know Donald Trump and you know that he’s going to make up his own mind and they’re going to have a very hard time proving that.”
In the same segment, Fox News legal analyst Greg Jarrett also blasted Smith’s indictment against Trump, noting challenging elections using the legal process is not a crime.
“This indictment strikes me as an amateurish joke, frankly,” Jarrett said. “Jack Smith as special counsel should be indicted for stupidity – It’s that bad.”
“The main point is if Donald Trump truly believed he won, even if he was wrong about it and he used the legal process to contest the outcome as the law clearly permits, that is not election fraud,” he said, adding that Hillary Clinton notably alleged election interference in 2016.
Hopefully the Supreme Court will come to the same conclusions as these constitutional experts and overturn Smith’s bogus indictment before the 2024 election.
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