Former Attorney General WIlliam Barr dismissed the argument that the election interference case against former President Donald Trump is not valid because his statements were protected by the First Amendment.
itself acknowledges that Trump"had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won." But Trump's alleged actions went beyond political speech, he said.
"This involved a situation where the states had already made the official and authoritative determination as to who won in those states and they sent the votes and certified them to Congress," Barr said."The allegation, essentially, by the government is that at that point, the president conspired, entered into a plan, a scheme, that involved a lot of deceit, the object of which was to erase those votes, to nullify those lawful votes.
"The other elements were the substitution of bogus panels — that were not authorized panels — to claim that they had alternative votes," he said."And that was clearly wrong and the certifications they signed were false. But then pressuring the vice president to use that as a pretext to adopt the Trump votes and reject the Biden votes or even to delay it — it really doesn't matter whether it's to delay it or to adopt it or to send it to the House of Representatives.
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