Jack Smith says 'no historical analog' for Trump's actions around 2020 election, denies political influence [View all]

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"There is no historical analog for what President Trump did in this case. As we said in the indictment, he was free to say that he thought he won the election. He was even free to say falsely that he won the election," Smith said. "But what he was not free to do was violate Federal law and use knowing -- knowingly false statements about election fraud to target a lawful government function. That he was not allowed to do. And that differentiates this case from any past history."

And Smith said Trump wrote a tweet that "without question in my mind endangered the life of his own Vice President" during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Smith said several witnesses who said they voted or campaigned for Trump -- including the Speaker of the House in Arizona and Speaker of the House in Michigan -- were the foundation of the case.

"We had an elector in Pennsylvania who is a former Congressman who was going to be an elector for President Trump who said that what they were trying to do was an attempt to overthrow the government and illegal. Our case was built on, frankly, Republicans who put their allegiance to the country before the party," Smith said.

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https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/jack-smith-historical-analog-trumps-actions-2020-election/story?id=128819035