Former Prosecutor Suggests Special Prosecutor Is Looking To Charge Trump With Wire Fraud

Donald Trump raised roughly $250 million after the 2020 election, telling his supporters that this money was needed so that he could challenge the election results. But he didn't spend any of that money to challenge the election, and special prosecutor Jack Smith has recently been interviewing people close to Trump who handled the fundraising arm. Smith wouldn't be looking if he didn't think something could be there, as Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

During an interview this past weekend, former prosecutor Glenn Kirchner, actually suggested that Jack Smith, the special prosecutor, overseeing the DOJs investigation into Donald Trump, might be looking at wire for, uh, wire fraud charges, excuse me, against former President Donald Trump. Now, Kirchner explains, and, and of course we, we know all this, I'm not sure if everybody knows it, but here's what Kirchner explains. We know that in recent weeks, actually, recent months, Jack Smith has been subpoenaing people with the Save America Political Action Committee. Save America is the Political action committee that Donald Trump used to raise 250 million after the 2020 election. And he did that by, you know, basically spamming his supporters with emails saying, this election was taken from us. We have to fight in court to get it back. But in order to do that, you gotta give us some money because I don't wanna spend it out of pocket.

Right? That would be silly. No, send me your money and I'll fight this election with your money. Not, not any of my money. And he raised $250 million doing that. Now, the problem is, as best we can tell from financial disclosure forms and all of that, and the lawsuit financing, he didn't spend any of that money on any of that. Like literally $0 fighting the results of the 2020 election out of the 250 million that he raised. So the big question is, would that constitute wire fraud in an ordinary situation? If Donald Trump was not a politician, it would 100%. You're raising money under fraudulent pretenses and using them for something other than the stated purpose. You're defrauding people to cost them money. That is wire fraud. But with campaign finance laws, things get a little murier. So if Smith wanted to hit Donald Trump with wire fraud charges, this would once again be another uncharted area, and it would open up every politician in this country left and right to potential rewire fraud charges based on what they say in their fundraising emails. And, and I think that's a good thing. Like I want Smith to go down this path, not just to have another thing to hit Donald Trump for, but maybe to bring a little bit of honesty to campaign finance. I mean, we're not gonna get campaign finance reform anytime soon, so we may as well have a criminal aspect to it if you try to overstep the bounds. But let me read you what Kirchner said.

Those are fairly easy charges to prove talking about the wire fraud. So I have a feeling you can see a series of wire fraud charges. And what I would predict would be the larger

Charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States. Because remember, a federal judge in California ruled previously, there was enough evidence or preponderance of the evidence that Donald Trump committed the crime of conspiracy to defraud the United States. So that would be where you would probably be able to grow the wire fraud chars charges from, because the wire fraud was committed in order to further another crime, which was fraud against the United States itself. So that's where the campaign finance, you know, murkiness may become a little more clear and may not apply here because if you're raising money to do something that was inherently illegal in the first place, fraud against the United States, then those campaign finance laws are not gonna protect you. That's what Kercher is explaining, and that's why it's not necessarily as murky as it may seem, but we'll see.