Special counsel Jack Smith is investigating the notion that former President Donald Trump expressed confidence in the 2020 elections, according to a report.
In a meeting in February 2020, according to CNN, the former president praised the efforts of federal authorities to expand the security measures around voting, such as expanding the use of paper ballots and audits of vote tallies. Sources told the outlet that Smith has asked several former Trump officials about the meeting, which was attended by several senior members.
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They added that the questions Smith asked revolved around how informed Trump was on the topic and how he reacted to learning of the security measures. The special counsel was also interested in whether Trump retaliated against any of his staff who contradicted him on the matter.
It is possible Smith is trying to find evidence that Trump was acting in bad faith when he publicly cast doubt on the United States’s election system.
“Should [Trump] reasonably have known that there was no fraud and he lost?” Elie Honig, a former federal prosecutor and legal analyst, asked. “Or does he have some sort of claim that he was acting in good faith or acting on the reasonable advice of his advisers in contesting the election?”
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“It’s one more piece of the larger ‘[Trump] knew or should have known’ puzzle,’” he added. “It’s one more indicator that Jack Smith has looked under every rock.”
Trump expressed his first doubts about the security of the U.S. election system two months later, in April.
