Fox News anchor Julie Banderas on Monday curiously defended Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election by insisting that “hatching schemes to stay in office” while “claiming you won an election you know you lost” are not crimes.
While serving as guest anchor on Monday’s broadcast of The Faulkner Focus, Banderas interviewed former deputy assistant attorney general Tom Dupree about Trump’s attempt to move the Jan. 6 trial to West Virginia and force the judge to recuse herself.
After Dupree said Trump’s legal team faced an “uphill battle” on both fronts, Banderas then raged about how it was “impossible” for the thrice-indicted ex-president to be “impartially” tried in that case. She also noted that Trump is expected to soon be indicted for a fourth time, this time in Georgia over his election meddling efforts in that state.
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“Politics written all over it,” she exclaimed. “Attorneys are supposed to represent the law, not politics, OK? Judges, same! Judges are the only ones able to recuse themselves, OK? So it is up to a judge to recuse themself. So if they have it in for one of the future cases, there is no way to recuse themselves. So obviously the system is a little bit broken, I would have to say.”
Bringing up the likely indictment in Georgia, Banderas said Fulton Country District Attorney Fani Willis was investigating whether Trump had “committed crimes” in trying to overthrow the 2020 election, notably using air quotes.
“I want to talk about Trump’s alleged crimes for one second,” she said. “He hasn’t been indicted for incitement, we know that, right? So, it’s not a crime to tell lies.”
Banderas then added: “Being a narcissist is not a crime. Hatching schemes to stay in office is not a crime. And claiming you won an election you know you lost is not a crime.”
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While Banderas essentially claimed a coup plot isn’t necessarily criminal, the latest indictment of the former president lays out in detail that he’s been charged with conspiracy to overthrow a legitimate election “by using knowingly false claims of election fraud to obstruct the federal government function by which these results are collected, counted and certified.”
Additionally, Special Counsel Jack Smith pointed out that Trump worked with a set of co-conspirators to organize fraudulent slates of electors to reverse the election results in seven states that had voted for President Joe Biden. He devised this scheme even though, according to the indictment, he knew claims that the election had been “stolen” from him were false.
“In fact, the Defendant was notified repeatedly that his claims were untrue—often by the people on whom he relied for candid advice on important matters, and who were best positioned to know the facts—and he deliberately disregarded the truth,” the indictment read.
Banderas is far from the only Fox News personality who has either downplayed the seriousness of the criminal charges against Trump or misrepresented the indictment. Furthermore, the conservative cable giant has repeatedly pushed the specious argument that Trump’s indictment criminalizes free speech, since all he was doing was expressing his frustration about the 2020 election.
Trump’s former attorney general Bill Barr, meanwhile, has trashed the ex-president’s legal team’s claims that the indictment represented an “attack on free speech,” noting that “all conspiracies involve speech and all fraud involves speech, so you know, free speech doesn’t give you the right to engage in a fraudulent conspiracy.”
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