In what Lawrence O'Donnell called a "shockingly incompetent slip," Trump criminal defense lawyer John Lauro, in his first interview after Trump pleaded not guilty to conspiring to trying to get Mike Pence to break the law, said this.
LAURO: Professor Eastman laid out a series of options that we discussed with Vice President Pence. Vice President Pence disagreed on certain issues but ultimately what President Trump said is, let's go with option the, let's just halt, let's just pause the voting to allow the state legislatures to take one last look and make a determination as to whether the elections were handled fairly.
"That is a Trump criminal defense lawyer quoting Donald Trump committing a crime. Donald Trump's criminal defense lawyer tonight added information to special prosecutor Jack Smith's 42-page description of Donald Trump's crimes. The conversation that John Lauro just described appears on page 34 of the indictment against his client. The indictment describes that conversation is a criminal conspiracy.
"The version of that conversation that Donald Trump's criminal defense lawyer delivered tonight is every bit as criminal as the version that appears in the indictment. On page 34 of the indictment it says, on January 4th, the defendant, Donald Trump held a meeting with coconspirator John Eastman. the vice president's chief of staff, and the vice president's counsel for the purpose of convincing the vice president, based on the defendant Donald Trump's knowingly false claims of election fraud, that the vice president should reject or send to the states Biden's legitimate electoral votes rather than count them," he said.
"That criminal conduct described in that sentence was admitted tonight on television by Donald Trump's criminal defense lawyer. The indictment has more about that meeting. quote, during the meeting, as reflected in the vice president's contemporaneous notes, the defendant, Donald Trump, made knowingly false claims of election fraud, including, bottom line, 'won every state by hundreds of thousands of votes' and 'we won every state.' "
In other words, Trump's criminal defense lawyer actually admitted to one of Jack Smith's accusations in the indictment. On television.
