Former US President, Donald Trump’s defense lawyers met for an hour with special counsel Jack Smith and his team on Thursday, July 27 ahead of a possible indictment in the Jan. 6 probe.
Todd Blanche and John Lauro, Trump’s top lawyers in the case, were expected to make the case to Smith that he should not indict Trump in the alleged plot to overturn the 2020 election won by Joe Bidem.
According to NBC News, Trump’s team was told to expect an indictment but Trump called it a “productive meeting” and claimed no notice of an indictment was given to his lawyers.
“I did nothing wrong,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media site. “An Indictment of me would only further destroy our country.”
The high-stakes meeting comes more than a week after Trump was hit with a target letter informing him that he would likely be indicted.
The letter mentioned three possible crimes that Trump could face: defrauding the U.S. government, depriving people of their rights under the color of law and tampering with witnesses.
The grand jury hearing evidence in the Jan. 6 investigation was meeting as usual behind closed doors. After Thursday, it would meet next on Tuesday.
There was no immediate indication that Smith might ask the panel to hand up indictments of Trump or anyone else Thursday.
Smith personally attended a similar meeting with Trump’s attorneys in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case. The defense plea apparently fell on deaf ears in that instance and Trump was indicted three days after the meeting, making him the first former president to be charged with federal crimes.
He pleaded not guilty to a 37-count indictment in that case and faces a May 20, 2024 trial date.
Trump is the only person who has acknowledged receiving a target letter in the Jan. 6 probe. Legal analysts say that does not necessarily mean no one else would be charged.
Along with the former president, several of his allies could be targeted in the case including his then White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and several other far right-wing lawyers who helped hatch the scheme to block Congress from certifying Biden’s win.
Giuliani recently met with Smith’s prosecutors in an effort to fend off an indictment by telling them what he knows about the scheme that culminated in the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
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