Donald Trump Might Be Completely Changing His Legal Strategy

Donald Trump has shared a social media post that claims he tried to activate the Insurrection Act during the January 6 riot in the Capitol Building, which may signal a change in direction in his defense on charges of trying to overturn the 2020 election.

The act is only used in extreme situations where law and order has broken down and the military is called in to contain rebellion.

The post on the social media site Truth Social claims that Trump was prevented from announcing his use of the act by Twitter, now rebranded as X, which was allegedly deleting his tweets on January 6.

If Trump's reposting is an endorsement of this theory, it is a big departure from his defense in his election interference case. The former president's claim until now has been that he didn't know how serious the situation was at the Capitol building.

Trump was indicted on four counts of allegedly working to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the run-up to the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. It is one of four criminal cases that he is facing while he campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination.

He has also pleaded not guilty to charges in the other cases, denying any wrongdoing, and has repeatedly said that they form part of a political witch hunt.

Newsweek sought email comment on Monday from Trump's legal team and has contacted X regarding the alleged deleted tweets.

The Insurrection Act allows the president to call in the military to put down a rebellion or contain unrest and is only used in the most extreme situations.

The law has been invoked a small number of times in the past century, most recently by then President George H.W. Bush to put down the Los Angeles riots in 1992 after the police beating of Rodney King.

That followed mass unrest by tens of thousands of people that eventually left 63 dead, 2,300 injured and more than 12,000 arrested.

Kyle Cheney, senior legal affairs analyst at Politico, wrote on X that Trump's resharing shows that he is "promoting the nonsense idea that he wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act amid the violence on Jan. 6. If it were true (which it clearly is not), it would blow up his legal defenses and also would likely have triggered waves of violence."

Trump opponents have long said that Trump did not want to stop the unrest, in which rioters tried to stop Congress from officially confirming President Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 presidential election.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the January 6 committee, said Trump had no interest in calling off the rioters.

"The mob was accomplishing President Trump's purpose, so of course he didn't intervene," Kinzinger told the committee in July, 2022.