By ERIC TUCKER and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump has embraced the rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as patriots, vowed to pardon a large portion of them if he wins a second term and even collaborated on a song with a group of jailed defendants.
In his election interference case in Washington, his lawyers are taking a different tack.
Despite losing a bid to strike from the indictment references to that day’s violence, defense attorneys have made clear their strategy involves distancing the former president from the horde of rioters, whom they describe as “independent actors at the Capitol.” At the same time, special counsel Jack Smith’s team has signaled it will make the case that Trump is responsible for the chaos that unfolded, and point to Trump’s continued support of the Jan. 6 defendants to help establish his criminal intent.
The competing arguments highlight the extent to which the riot serves as an inescapable backdrop in a landmark trial set to begin on March 4 in a courthouse just blocks away from the Capitol.
It also reflects a point of separation between Trump and his legal team in the case accusing the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination of conspiring to overturn his 2020 election loss. While Trump’s glorification of Jan. 6 defendants may boost him politically as he vies to retake the White House in 2024, his lawyers’ approach lays bare a concern that arguments linking him to the rioters could harm him in front of a jury.
Though Trump is not charged with inciting the riot, any success he hopes to have at trial may turn in part on his defense team’s ability to neutralize, or at least minimize, the ghoulish images of the violence that prosecutors cite as a natural extension of the former president’s repeated lies about a stolen election.
Much may depend as well on the evidence permitted by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan. Trump’s lawyers have signaled they will try to…
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