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 interviews with the two women in December 2022 that revealed “the threats and harassment they endured after the defendant and his agents falsely accused them,” Trump “doubled down and recommenced his attacks on the election workers in posts on Truth Social.
He even zeroed in on one of the election workers, falsely writing that she was an election fraudster, a liar, and one of the ‘treacher[ous] . . . monsters’ who stole the country and that she would be in legal trouble.”
Trump loyalist and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani already conceded that he made defamatory statements against both women to answer to a defamation lawsuit they filed against him in 2021.
After he also accused them of ballot mishandling and fraud, Trump supporters sent a number of heinous death threats to Freeman and Moss, but Giuliani rejected the notion that his false claims caused damages to them both. A jury will determine damages in that case.
Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesman, released a statement following the new court filing for federal Trump’s election fraud case:
“Crooked Joe Biden, Deranged Jack Smith, and the rest of the hacks and thugs attempting to interfere in the 2024 election are getting so desperate to attack President Trump that they are perverting justice by trying to include claims that weren’t anywhere to be found in their dreamt-up, fake indictment. President Trump will not be deterred.”
The trial is slated to start in March 2024.
Trump also faces three other criminal indictments, one in New York over hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels, another in Florida addressing his alleged mishandling of classified federal documents, and one more in Georgia over potential election interference in the state.
