Trump news today: Jack Smith seeks protective order over Truth Social ‘threat’

Florida governor and 2024 presidential candidate Ron DeSantis said on Friday that Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was rigged are not true.

“All those theories that were put out did not prove to be true,” Mr DeSantis told The New York Times during a campaign stop in Iowa.

Mr Trump has been charged with three criminal conspiracies – including a conspiracy to deprive Americans’ right to vote and to have their votes counted, a statute rooted in bedrock civil rights protections enacted in the brutal aftermath of the US Civil War.

A crime of conspiracy against rights invokes Section 241 of Title 18 of US Code, among criminal codes that came from the Enforcement Acts, also known as the Ku Klux Klan Acts. Those laws were designed to protect Americans’ newly enshrined rights under the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments – allowing the federal government to protect the rights of newly enfranchised Black people to vote, hold office, serve on juries and receive equal protection under the law against white supremacist terror.

Prosecutors in the Department of Justice and Donald Trump’s attorneys have gone back and forth with each other in filings sent to Judge Tanya Chutkan over a proposed protective order response.

The requested order, proposed by federal prosecutors, was filed on Friday and asks Judge Chutkan to prevent Mr Trump and his attorneys from revealing specific information about the January 6th and alleged election conspiracy indictment publicly.

Judge Chutkan initially asked Mr Trump’s attorneys to respond by Monday at 5pm ET but the lawyers responded asking for a delay until Wednesday.

The DoJ filed a statement to Judge Chutkan saying Mr Trump’s motion “should be denied.”

“The Government wants to provide discovery to the defendant. By his motion, the defendant seeks to delay that process,” the statement reads.

Former vice president and 2024 candidate Mike Pence is capitalising on Donald Trump’s recent federal indictment by drawing positive attention to his own campaign with joking merchandise and snapping back at hecklers.

While on the campaign trail in New Hampshire this past week, Mr Pence was confronted by a group of Mr Trump’s supporters who called him a “sellout” and “traitor” for refusing to falsely and unlawfully certify the 2020 election results in Mr Trump’s favor.

“Why didn’t you uphold the Constitution?” one protester shouted at Mr Pence on Friday.

Mr Pence notoriously refused to engage in Mr Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election which ultimately made him a target during the Capitol riots.

The ex-vice president calmly turned to the group of Trump supporters and responded, “I upheld the constitution. Read it.”

Federal prosecutors accused Donald Trump and his attorneys of trying to delay the process in his January 6 case by filing a motion to delay the time they are given to respond.

“The Government wants to provide discovery to the defendant. By his motion, the defendant seeks to delay that process,” the filing from the Department of Justice on Saturday reads.

Prosecutors urged Judge Tanya Chutkan to deny Mr Trump’s motion to delay the date of response.

Mr Trump’s attorneys asked the judge to move the date from Monday until Wednesday to give them more time to consider the proposed protective order.

“If one was to judge Donald Trump’s mood by the various missives he posts to his bespoke social media platform, it’s possible to come away with the impression that the latest indictment filed against him — the third of a possible four criminal cases he could face before next year’s election — is nothing but a boon to his re-election hopes.”

Frederick Francis Goltz, a man who advocated for a mass shooting of poll workers and threatened two Arizona officials and their children, has been sentenced to 3 1/2 years in federal prison.

Prosecutors said court documents showed that Mr Goltz threatened several people including a lawyer with the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office and a Maricopa County elections official, on far-right social media platforms.

In plea papers, Goltz admitted that on 21 November 2022, he posted the lawyer’s name, home address and telephone number on social media, writing: “It would be a shame if someone got to this children.” On the same date, in response to another post referring to other Maricopa County officials, he wrote: “Someone needs to get these people AND their children. The children are the most important message to send.”

After former President Donald Trump falsely claimed that the 2020 election was stolen from him, there was a rise in threats against elections officials.

Associated Press contributed to this report.