Trump's lawyer John Lauro, like Trump, is a flat out liar

And journalists like Chuck Todd let him lie, without factchecking.

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Donald Trump’s lead attorney, John Lauro, blanketed the Sunday talk shows this past weekend. The amount of time he put into TV appearances certainly casts doubt on his claims that he and Trump don’t have enough time to prepare for their case and thus need extensions.

Lauro, of course, is enlisted by Trump to be a TV propagandist in addition to an attorney, as has always been the case regarding Trump’s lawyers. On Sunday, Lauro made claims that were distortions of truth and law or falsehoods, some of which were pushed back on by interviewers or later debunked by other guests. But in an interview on NBC’s “Meet The Press” with Chuck Todd, Lauro flat-out lied about something so obvious—and wasn’t fact checked on it at all.

Todd referred to Trump calling Special Counsel Jack Smith "deranged" at a fundraiser over the weekend, and played the clip.

You can watch what happened next for yourself, but here’s the exchange:

Todd: Do you believe [Jack Smith is] deranged?

Lauro: President Biden in April of 2022 said he wanted President Trump prosecuted, and he wanted him out of the race. He repeated that in November of 2022. As a result, President Biden has put in motion a political prosecution in the middle of an election season. And obviously everything is open to politics. I’m not involved in politics. I’m just representing a client. I’m ensuring that justice is done in this case. President Trump is entitled to his day in court, and he’ll get it.

Todd: Right.

No, wrong! Very wrong.

President Biden has, since the beginning of his presidency, refused comment on the Department of Justice investigations of Trump—and has stated emphatically that he’s not spoken with Attorney General Merrick Garland about Trump—and has most recently refused comment on Trump’s latest indictments, a fact noted by NBC just last week.

Biden never "said" publicly in April 2022, as Lauro states without a source, that Trump "should be prosecuted." What Lauro might be referring to is an April 2, 2022 New York Times article that uses unnamed sources to claim that Biden "late last year" (which would mean late in 2021) confided to aides that he believed Trump should be prosecuted and expressed frustration with Garland. (Though even the unnamed sources in the Times piece don’t say Biden wanted him "out of the race.")

The same article stated, according to the same unnamed sources, that there is no communication between Biden and the DOJ on investigations. But no matter what the piece claimed, it’s not based on any public comment. And when asked for public comment for the article, White House spokesman Andrew Bates assured the paper that Biden was "immensely proud of the attorney general’s service in this administration and has no role in investigative priorities or decisions."

So, this was all gossip. It wasn’t backed up by any public statement by Biden or anyone else in the White House. As for Lauro’s claim that Biden "repeated" his call for Trump to be prosecuted in November 2022, it’s even worse. Lauro is clearly referring to the debunked hit job by Trump and his supporters, an edited video circulated on social media six months after Biden’s original comments, when Trump faced his first indictment in New York in April.

The video purports to show proof that Biden coordinated the New York indictment against Trump and wants Trump prosecuted. But, when fact-checked by the AP, Factcheck.org, and others, it was determined to be false, as the comments from November 2022 were clipped out of context, made to appear as if they were current, and had absolutely nothing to do with indictments. They were comments in response to a reporter’s question about concerns by world leaders about Trump running for president again, with Biden reassuring world leaders that Americans, via the electoral process, would make sure Trump was not re-elected.

From the AP:

CLAIM: A video shows President Joe Biden essentially confirming that his team coordinated the indictment of former President Donald Trump to "stop Trump from taking power again."

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The video dates to November 2022 and shows Biden answering a question about how to reassure world leaders that Trump would not return to power. Trump was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury in a process that did not involve the Biden administration. A conviction would not prevent Trump from running for or winning the presidency in 2024.

From Factcheck.org:

Quick take:

Social media posts and former President Donald Trump are sharing an edited video of President Joe Biden to make the unfounded claim that Biden "is coordinating these Trump indictments." Biden’s comments, made in 2022, were related to international concerns about American democracy, not Trump’s legal battles.

But any journalist—any American—following the news doesn’t need these factchecks at his or her fingertips to be able to see that Lauro is lying. There have been dozens of stories about how Biden is not involved in any way in the process of the DOJ's Trump investigations and how he won’t comment on them.

Here’s a portion of an AP report from June 12 of this year—"Biden is determined to say as little as possible about Trump’s indictment"—following Trump’s indictment in the espionage case:

It’s rare for the leader of the free world to be rendered silent, but President Joe Biden is clearly determined to say as little as possible about his predecessor Donald Trump’s federal indictment.

Biden’s White House dodges questions about the matter. His campaign doesn’t respond to them. And Biden himself wants nothing to do with it. "I have no comment on what happened," he told reporters Friday while in Rocky Mount, North Carolina…

…"I have never once—not one single time—suggested to the Justice Department what they should do or not do, relative to bringing a charge or not bringing a charge," Biden said Thursday. "I’m honest."

Asked Friday whether he had spoken to Attorney General Merrick Garland about the case, Biden replied curtly.

"I have not spoken to him at all," he told reporters. "I’m not going to speak to him."

As I stated at the top, Lauro spewed other distortions of truth and law, such as when he told Todd that a "technical violation of the Constitution" is not a “violation of criminal law.” Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a constitutional scholar, came on “Meet the Press” after Lauro and blew that out of the water, pointing out that there are specific statutes—laws—in addition to the Constitution that Trump is being charged with violating in the indictment.

It shouldn’t take another guest, coming on later, to debunk a falsehood. What about the people who tuned out after Lauro's interview? And Raskin, while enormously qualified as a constitutional scholar, is still a member of the opposition party and was the lead impeachment manager for Trump’s second impeachment. "Meet the Press" allows people to dismiss the correction as partisan, or to believe the "both sides" approach is presenting two equally legitimate sides when in fact one is wrong and one is right.

Lauro perhaps shouldn’t be on any talk shows, not without a former federal prosecutor right there to debunk him, political analysts right there to challenge him, and journalists who will point out his lies. His claim to Todd that "I’m not involved in politics" is laughable because his appearance on the shows is all about politics.

Trump is not a normal defendant facing normal charges. Trump is a political candidate running for the highest office in the land. He ordered Lauro to get out there and shape public opinion, like the many lawyers who’ve gone before him. Lauro is trying to influence potential jurors but also trying to help Trump politically as Trump claims political persecution while pursuing the presidency in 2024. Lauro should be treated like the political surrogate that he is—limited in appearances and relentlessly fact-checked.