Trump is using Jack Smith filings to set up claims that 2024 vote is rigged: experts

October 21, 2024

On their“Jack” podcast, legal analyst Allison Gill and former deputy director of the FBI Andy McCabe connected the dots between what they called Donald Trump’s “absurd” court motions in his 2020 election interference criminal case, and how he might use them to claim fraud in 2024.

Gill cited a tweet from MSNBC legal analyst Kristy Greenberg, who addressed ongoing requests for delays and motions to dismiss, saying Trump makes the filings so he “could slam Democrats for election interference when the documents were released over his objection.”

Gill said that she “vehemently agreed,” and that Trump is “throwing red meat to his base that this anti-Trump judge andthug Jack Smith overturned him.”

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Most recently, Trump demanded Judge Tanya Chutkan blocked new evidence against him in the federal election interference case from being unsealed. Trump’s lawyers argue the government is trying to unfairly influence the 2024 election by releasing this material publicly.

He was unsuccessful, special counsel Smith detailed a “mountain of evidence” against him, including Trump’s disregard for the truth and a pattern of making up voter fraud allegations. Smith argued Trump’s actions were a private criminal plot to overturn the 2020 election, not official presidential duties.

“I don’t think he actually cares,” began McCabe. “Like, all of these arguments they made in that absurd motion for the extra delay, they’re just nonsensical. There’s a lot of different things going on here. Yeah, it’s a different motion you can file. It costs time and attention of the judge and of the other side, although she [Chutkan] dispatched it pretty quickly.”

Generally speaking, he said that this all goes to the “dragging of feet and delay strategy.”

“But I think more than that,” McCabe continued, “I think what you’re saying is true. This is more of setting up a record that they can use later as the basis of legal attacks, appeals, things of that nature.”

He suggested that the Trump campaign will likely work to manufacture as many arguments as possible to challenge the result of the 2024 election.

“They’ll say, ‘This is all part of campaign interference. Election interference. Unconstituional. Violated due process. And you have to derail the election as a result,” said McCabe.

He called it the “Hail Mary of all Hail Marys.”

Trump “wants something to put in a lawsuit pleading to say that the election needs to be redone because of this interference,” agreed Gill.

She said that most of his legal paperwork “is so bereft of logic and law” that it’s difficult to tell sometimes if he’s crafting a pathway for the 2024 election, an effort to delay or if the motions are simply that bad.

“So, if this were just a one-off thing I would think it was a pretext to getting a delay until after the election. But because there’s really nothing of substance that we don’t already know about in the thing [evidence published] that’s kind of why I land back with what Kristy Greenberg says, that he just wants something to complain about,” said Gill.

Listen to the full podcast here.