Trump's Legal Team Brings His ‘Big Lie’ About The 2020 Election Into A Federal Courtroom

WASHINGTON ― Donald Trump brought his “Big Lie” ― that the 2020 election was stolen from him ― into a federal appeals courtroom Tuesday, with the argument that his attempts to overturn the election leading up to and on Jan. 6, 2021, were official acts, and that he is therefore immune from prosecution.

Trump was “responding to widespread allegations of fraud, abuse and misfeasance in a presidential election, trying to find how to respond to that in a manner that’s in the national interest,” attorney John Sauer told three judges on the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, with the former president sitting just behind him.

The claim appears to run afoul of legal ethics rules that prohibit lawyers from making false statements in court.

“Lawyers have broad leeway to argue propositions of law that may be tendentious. But they commit ethical breaches when they intentionally make false factual statements to a court,” said George Conway, a lawyer who worked on the case that ultimately got former President Bill Clinton impeached for perjury and who is now a vocal Trump critic. “And this legal position, that Trump was seeking to investigate ‘fraud,’ is a brazen lie. A lie that should be sanctionable.”

Ty Cobb, a former Trump White House lawyer, said previous statements that Trump’s lawyers have made in briefs may also cause them problems.

“This and the many other citations, for which the alleged source cannot be found, raise those ‘candor before the court’ issues,” Cobb said.

Sauer was the only one on Trump’s legal team to present during oral arguments Tuesday, but two of his colleagues, John Lauro and Todd Blanche, also signed on to a brief they filed last week that makes the same claim.

None responded to