Fox & Friends Legal Analyst Defends Trump Indictment As Fraudulent Fake Elector Scheme — Not About Free Speech

Fox & Friends opened Tuesday’s show with legal analyst Elliot Felig who calmly explained why the new charges brought against Donald Trump are legitimate.

Felig served as a Manhattan District Attorney’s Office prosecutor from 1996 to 2009 under District Attorney Robert Morgenthau and is notable here not for his illustrative career but for how he explained the recent charges brought against Trump in a significantly different manner to nearly all other legal analysts who have appeared on Fox News since the indictment dropped.

Special counsel Jack Smith filed a stunning 45-page indictment which was unsealed on Tuesday. Prosecutors laid out in astonishing detail their allegations that Trump repeatedly pushed election officials to reject the results of the election in their states while orchestrating a plot with several co-conspirators to fraudulently overturn the election, despite knowing their claims of election fraud were false.

Prime time hosts on Fox News Tuesday night spent nearly all their time mocking the indictment as an attack on Trump’s free speech and insisting it was emblematic of what they call “two tiers of justice” and “election interference.” In other words, amplifying Trump’s rhetoric.

But Felig explained that this indictment was not about what Trump said or free speech but that it was about the alleged fraudulent effort to put forth fake electors to overturn the results of 2020, thereby robbing Americans of a legitimate election:

Felig: So he has a First Amendment right to say the election was stolen. He can say that all over the country. He can say it all over TV. He has a right to file lawsuit after lawsuit claiming that the election was stolen and try to stop the certification. However, where he got in trouble is when they assembled these electors in the various states after Joe Biden had been declared the winner by the secretaries of state or by the governors, had them sign a certification saying we are the duly elected and duly certified electors. That’s where he’s going to argue there was no good faith basis. That’s where he’s going to say the fraud took place. If I can make an analogy right, I could come on your show. I can say I’m Elon Musk’s long-lost son, and I’m entitled to inherit all of his billions and billions of dollars when he dies. I can say that all over the country, even though it’s false. Even though it’s stupid,

Dooyc: It’s the First Amendment!

Felig: Your First Amendment. Exactly. But if after Elon Musk passes away, I walk into probate court, hand up a document that says, hey, this is Elon Musk. Well, I know it’s not his will and it says I’m his son. And I say, I get all these billions of dollars. Guess what? Then I’ve committed fraud, then I’ve committed forgery. I may be done on attempted grand larceny. And Jack Smith is going to make the argument that that’s where they were not acting in good faith, that when they had these false certificates prepared, when they asked Mike Pence to accept those rather than the other certificates, that’s where he’s going to argue the fraud was.

Earhardt: Because he’s argue that Trump knew those were false certificates.

Felig: Right. He’s going to argue that there was.

Earhardt: Because Trump everyone you talked to says he still believes that he won the election. Right.

Felig: Well, that’s a great point. So to the extent that the indictment depends on knowingly making false statements, the key there is knowingly yeah, Donald Trump is going to defend this by saying he truly believed at the time and still to this day, absolutely believes that the election was stolen even in the absence of evidence, even though his own attorney general and so many others said, no, this was a fair election.

Watch above, via Fox News.

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