Fox Legal Contributor Claims There Is No Merit To ANY of the Charges Against Trump: ‘Nothing Wrong With Saying I Need to Find 11,000 Votes’
Fox News contributor and legal commentator Leo Terrell dismissed the idea that any of the charges leveled against former president Donald Trump in four separate indictments have “any merit whatsoever” during an appearance on The Faulkner Focus Tuesday.
“They’re trying to stop Trump from running for president,” Terrell told Harris Faulkner. “The Democrats are using the legal system — this is why this is so weird — they’re using the legal system for political gains. And basically what they’re doing is a [sic] opposing candidate through the legal system. That’s not how our legal system works.”
Terrell continued on with analysis that eschewed legal arguments for political ones:
These cases, in my opinion, do not have any merit whatsoever. From all the four cases that have been charged for indictments, these cases are purely political. That’s why it’s so hard, as a lawyer of 30 years, to see these cases through the legal lens of how justice is served.
After Faulkner asked “how far a legal reach” Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was making with her indictment of Trump in Georgia, Terrell conceded that there were “specific election laws” in the Peach State that at least made Willis’s allegations actionable, but he quickly returned to mounting a full-throated defense of the former president.
“But whether or not there’s merit to these charges, for example, the DA claims that there’s 161 acts. Like tweeting? Like a phone call? So she has basically thrown the kitchen sink at Trump. I don’t think the case has merit from a standard of the fact that Trump was basically articulating his right as president during the time and his First Amendment right,” said Terrell. “There is nothing wrong with saying over the phone ‘Hey, I need to find 11,000 votes.’ That’s not criminal! That’s speech!”
Terrell was referencing a phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in January 2021 during which the former asked the latter to help him find the exact number of votes he needed to overtake Joe Biden’s lead in the Peach State.
“The ballots are corrupt, and they’re brand new, and they don’t have seals, and there’s a whole thing with the ballots. But the ballots are corrupt,” Trump told Raffensperger. “And you are going to find that they are — which is totally illegal — it is more illegal for you than it is for them because, you know, what they did and you’re not reporting it. That’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer.”
Andy McCarthy, another Fox News contributor and former federal prosecutor, has argued that Willis’s case “may not be all that much of a reach” and described it as the “most perilous threat” to the former president.
Watch above via Fox News.
