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Lauro appeared to signal how he’d defend the former president in a trial that will stem from the four-count criminal indictment returned last week by a federal grand jury that had been examining Trump’s possible role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
Pence elaborated on the subject Sunday, saying on CBS News' "Face the Nation" that Trump, "from sometime in the middle of December" 2020 "began to be told that I had some authority to reject or return votes back to the states."
The indictment cited contemporaneous notes Pence took about meetings in which Trump pushed him to reject the Electoral College votes in multiple states.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the Jan. 6 committee who was lead manager in Trump's second impeachment trial, slammed Lauro’s argument as “deranged” and “a grievous constitutional defense" in a separate interview Sunday on "Meet the Press."
“He conspired to defraud the American people out of our right to an honest election by substituting the real legal process we have under federal and state law with counterfeit electors,” Raskin said.
"There is no way I can get a fair trial with the judge 'assigned' to the ridiculous freedom of speech/fair elections case," Trump wrote in an all-capitalized post on his Truth Social platform.