Former President Donald Trump may look to blame Vladimir Putin for interference in the 2016 U.S. election if it can keep him out of prison, according to a legal filing reported by Politico.
Trump still leads the pack in the Republican primaries but faces 91 felony counts across two state courts and two different federal districts, any of which could lead to a prison sentence. He also faces a civil suit in New York that could hurt his business empire.
Trump has repeatedly avoided agreeing with U.S. intelligence assessments that Putin had interfered on his behalf during the 2016 presidential election. In Helsinki in 2018, Trump said he didn’t” see any reason” to disbelieve the Russian leader’s assurances Moscow did not interfere.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump (L) chats with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin at the APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting in Danang, Vietnam on November 11, 2017. Trump’s lawyers may use Putin to help the former president’s legal case centered on his attempts to subvert the 2020 election.
MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/Getty Images
Trump’s false claims that the next election in 2020 was stolen from him spurred some of his supporters to try to overthrow the Electoral College vote and sparked rioters to storm the Capitol. It triggered a federal indictment obtained by special counsel Jack Smith focused on his attempt to subvert his loss.
Despite Trump’s insistence that Putin had nothing to do with his 2016 victory, which he had termed the “Russia hoax,” Politico has flagged an excerpt of his attorneys’ filing disputing Smith’s claims that the ex-president had damaged Americans’ faith in the electoral system—because Putin did it first.
“Trump wants people to know that it was Russia, not him, who caused Americans to distrust the election system,” wrote Politico’s Kyle Cheney on X (formerly Twitter) next to a screen grab of the legal filing.
MORE: Trump wants people to know that it was Russia, not him, who caused Americans to distrust the election system. He will make this case by relying on intelligence community assessments he and his allies have constantly maligned and disputed. https://t.co/VHze45aUfR pic.twitter.com/zJaYBvIF2V
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) November 28, 2023
“He will make this case by relying on intelligence community assessments he and his allies have constantly maligned and disputed,” he added.
The excerpt Cheney highlighted said that Smith’s office “falsely alleges that President Trump eroded public faith in the administration of the election.”
It noted how the 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) also “uses strikingly similar language to attribute the origins of that erosion to foreign influence—that is, foreign efforts to ‘undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process.'”
The filing went on to argue that Trump “is entitled to the detailed information supporting the conclusions in the 2016 Election ICA,” which can “demonstrate to a jury that he did not create or cause the environment that the prosecution seeks to blame him for.” Newsweek has contacted the Trump team and the Kremlin for comment.
Trump once described Putin as “very smart” in the wake of the Russian leader’s launch of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In January 2023, Trump suggested on Truth Social he trusted the Russian leader more than the “lowlifes” who work in U.S. intelligence. “Who would you choose, Putin or these Misfits?” posted Trump, referring to the intelligence community.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.